Forget Seattle, Wyoming rancher makes Pitt smile

Allen Cook, a Wyoming cattle rancher, recently donated 4,700 acres of land to Pitt’s Honors… Allen Cook, a Wyoming cattle rancher, recently donated 4,700 acres of land to Pitt’s Honors College. The land is valued at $7 million and contains dinosaur fossils as well as American Indian artifacts.

Pitt Honors College Dean Alec Stewart said that he has visited the property three or four times and has seen fossils laying on the surface of the land.

“As recently as this past October when I was out there, I tripped over this rock and looked down and it turned out to be a dinosaur vertebra,” Stewart said. “It was part of a backbone that stretched up the hillside. It was just laying there in the shape of a dinosaur’s tail.”

Stewart said the Honor’s College acquired the land partly because of his connection to Bill Mundy, a land economist who appraised Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. Mundy and Stewart attended the University of Washington at the same time.

Mundy was appraising the Cook Ranch when he learned of the Honors College’s interest in summer field programs, particularly the Yellowstone Field Program. He called Stewart to let him know about the land.

“Mundy introduced me to Cook, and we hit it off. I think that after speaking with him, he decided that the University of Pittsburgh was a place that would be a good steward for his land, which he loved and he would like to see be of great educational benefit,” Stewart said.

The Honors College learned about the availability of the land in 2000, and acquiring the land has been an ongoing process for five or six years.

Stewart received a call from Cook this past fall. He had said that he had a great cattle year and he would like to give the Honors College the pristine land.

Honors College Director of Programming Edward McCord said that Cook considered the University a suitable recipient.

“Evidently he was impressed that he could trust us to do the right thing with the land, to maximize its potential for research and education, and to involve other institutions than just ourselves here at the University,” McCord said.

McCord said the Honors College will partner in research with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the University of Wyoming. McCord said both institutions knew throughout this process that it was the intention of the Honors College to closely involve them with the research of this land.

McCord is the director of the Yellowstone Field Program, a four-credit course in which students spend one month living on a cattle ranch, hiking in Yellowstone and the Beartooth Mountains, and taking courses that range from geology to environmental law policy.

He said that, in the future, Pitt will expand the Yellowstone course to include a period of time in the southeast corner of the state studying paleontology and other subjects that relate to this new property.

“I’m just thrilled, as I think many others are, that the University has won this opportunity to have a new dimension of summer adventure in research and learning,” McCord said.

Stewart also expressed his enthusiasm for the new learning possibilities this land will bring. He said the Honors College is keen on summer learning programs because they offer an experience that is different from sitting in a classroom in Pittsburgh.

“If the function of good liberal education is to enable people to bargain with circumstances, then we should embrace those things that lead to a certain kind of resourcefulness,” Stewart said.

Stewart said that it is remarkable that Cook chose Pitt’s Honors College as the recipient of this gift, and he only hopes that they will be able to care for the land that Cook loves.

“Many people and many organizations would like to have had this … ranch that he has given to us,” Stewart said. “And it’s really humbling when he gives it to the University of Pittsburgh, a place he has absolutely no connection with, but whose values he likes.”