The Colorado Desert is situated in Wyoming, between the Green River on the west, and the Red Desert on the east.  The sheep are seen mostly on the breaks on Green River.  They are sometimes chased by cowboys, but I have never known of one being caught in that way.

I am told that in some bad lands in the Red Desert, locally known as Dobe Town, there is a herd of wild sheep, which are occasionally pursued by range riders.  Rarely one is roped.

Mr. Fred E. White, of Jackson, Wyo., advised me in 1898 of the existence of sheep in the mountains which drain into Gros Ventre Fork, the heads of Green River and Buffalo Fork of Snake River.  Mr. White was with the Webb party, some years ago, when they secured a number of sheep.  The same correspondent calls attention to the very large number of sheep which in 1888, and for a few years thereafter, ranged in the high mountains between the waters of the Yellowstone and the Stinking Water.  This is one of the countries from which sheep have been pretty nearly exterminated by hunters and prospectors.

Within the past twenty or thirty years mountain sheep have become very scarce in all of their old haunts in Wyoming and northern Colorado.  This does not seem to be particularly due to hunting, but the sheep seem to be either moving away or dying out.  Mr. W.H.  Reed, in 1898, wrote me from Laramie, Wyo., saying:  “At present there are perhaps thirty head on Sheep Mountain, twenty-two miles west of Laramie, Wyo.; on the west side of Laramie Peak there are perhaps twenty head; on the east side of the Peak twelve to fifteen head, and near the Platte Canon, at the head of Medicine Bow River, there are fifteen.  In 1894 I saw at the head of the Green River, Hobacks River, and Gros Ventre River, between two and three hundred mountain sheep.  There are sheep scattered all through the Wind River, and a very few in the Big Horn Mountains; but all are in small bunches, and these widely separated.  Some of the old localities where they were very abundant in the early ’70’s, but now are never seen, are Whalen Canon, Raw Hide Buttes, Hartville Mountains, thirty miles northwest of Ft.  Laramie, Elk Mountains, and the adjacent hills fifteen miles east of Fort Steele, near old Fort Halleck.  They seem to have disappeared also from the bad lands along Green River, south of the Union Pacific Railroad, from the Freezeout Hills, Platte Canyon, at the mouth of Sweetwater River, from Brown’s Canyon, forty miles northwest of Rawlins, from the Seminole and Ferris Mountains, and from many other places in the middle and northeastern part of Wyoming.”

In Colorado, the mountains surrounding North Park and west to the Utah line, had many mountain sheep twenty-five years ago, but to-day old hunters tell me that there are only two places where one is sure to find sheep.  These are Hahn’s Peak and the Rabbit Ears, two peaks at the south end of North Park.