The Ucross Foundation , located in Ucross , Wyoming , is a nonprofit organization that operates a retreat for visual artists, writers, composers, and choreographers working in all creative disciplines.
31-575: Founded in 1981 by Raymond Plank , Ucross is located on a 20,000-acre working cattle ranch in northeastern Wyoming. The Big Red Ranch Complex , which includes the Foundation’s main offices and a renovated barn that houses a public art gallery, was built in 1882 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places . The name Ucross comes from the original brand of the Pratt and Ferris Cattle Company in
62-549: A $ 250,000 capitalization to a market capitalization of over $ 30 billion. Plank invented the Master Limited Partnership and exposed corruption at Enron and within the energy merchant trading sector. Raymond Plank, the youngest of four siblings, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to farmer and coal miner Raby Plank and Maude Ruth Howe Plank. His parents’ schooling was limited but they instilled in their children
93-458: A community park, The Park at Ucross. The Park at Ucross hosts a small interdenominational chapel and The Raymond Plank Center, a modern structure that hosts art exhibitions, artists in residence, and regional and national conferences. Raymond Plank Raymond Plank (May 29, 1922 – November 8, 2018) was the founder and chairman of Apache Corporation . Under Plank’s leadership, Apache expanded its oil and gas operations internationally from
124-576: A different concept, Plank and two childhood friends, Truman Anderson and Chuck Aranao, formed Apache Corporation in 1954 with $ 250,000 in investor capital. Apache offered its first oil and gas investment program in 1956. Apache initially diversified beyond oil and gas into commercial real estate, purchasing office towers and shopping centers in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Apache’s real estate business achieved only minimal success, and when Oklahoma and Texas cut oil production allowables by as much as 90 percent in
155-541: A sixth child, Raby. Plank was the founder and former Chairman of the Board of the Ucross Foundation , which provides visual artists, writers and composers with a setting for individual creative work, reflection and innovation on a 20,000-acre working ranch in northeastern Wyoming. Some of the works supported by Ucross include: The Shipping News by Annie Proulx , Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert , The Light in
186-902: The Alley Theatre , the Pew Fellowships in the Arts, The Ford Family Foundation Fellowship for Oregon Artists, the Whiting Foundation, the Ford Family Foundation , UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, Yale University , the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University , Cave Canem, and the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. The renovated Ucross Art Gallery, located in the historic Big Red Barn, operates year-round at no cost to
217-625: The Lauren Anderson Dance Studio, named for the first Black principal dancer for a major ballet company, in the Koehler Performing Arts Center. Approximately 115 individuals are supported annually. Artists in residence live in their studios, the historic Ucross School House or the Clearmont Train Depot, which have been renovated to include four bedrooms each, with a dining area, living area, and main kitchen in
248-545: The tortoise which the English eighteenth century parson-naturalist Gilbert White inherited from his aunt, as described in his 1789 book The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne . In the first half of 2006, Klinkenborg posted a farm and garden blog about The Rural Life, consisting of entries from the daily journal kept by Gilbert White in Selborne in 1784, and his own complementary daily entries. From 1997 to 2013, he
279-655: The 1880s, which operated a large ranching concern with Big Red as its headquarters. Along with James Pratt and Cornelius Ferris, one of the early partners in the ranch was Marshall Field . The cattle brand for Pratt and Ferris Cattle Company had a U with a cross beneath. The Foundation provides living accommodations, studio space, uninterrupted time in the High Plains landscape to competitively selected individuals, for two to six weeks. Up to ten individuals are in residence at any one time. The Foundation has four writing studios, four visual arts studios, and two composing studios and
310-686: The Army Air Corps Reserves. He was called to active duty in March 1943 and would not resume his university education until the end of the war. Plank graduated from Yale University in 1946 with a bachelor of arts degree. After flight school, Plank was assigned to the 43rd Bomb Group, 64th Bomb Squadron, in the Pacific Theater of Operations as a B-24 bomber pilot. He completed 40 missions; three of his aircraft were so badly damaged in combat that they never flew again. On August 9, 1945, while based in
341-489: The New York and Midwest Stock Exchanges, providing liquidity to unit holders while preserving the tax advantages of their original limited partnership interests. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 spelled the end of Apache’s drilling programs by reducing top marginal tax rates to the lowest levels since 1917, thereby undercutting the attractiveness of Apache’s drilling programs to high-income taxpayers. Apache offered its unit holders
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#1732876057099372-565: The Okinawas, Plank took an unauthorized check flight to witness the mushroom cloud rising over Nagasaki . Upon graduation from Yale, Plank returned to his hometown of Minneapolis and with two partners formed Northwest Business Service, an accounting, tax and small business advisory firm. Through this enterprise, he became familiar with the types of investments then being offered in oil and gas exploration and production. Recognizing that investors’ interests in this field could be better served through
403-448: The Piazza with music and lyrics by Adam Guettel , and The Grapes of Wrath composed by Ricky Ian Gordon . In the 1990s, in recognition of the strong, lasting and positive influence that teachers had on his life, Plank started a program in his hometown of Minneapolis to provide teachers opportunities for summer sabbaticals, self-designed programs of learning and exploration. He endowed
434-867: The Raymond Plank Chair in Incentive Economics, and is past chairman of the University of Minnesota Foundation. He also was a trustee of the Northrop Collegiate School, member of the advisory board of Augsburg College , and founder of the Plank Institute at The Blake School, all in Minneapolis. Plank was a founding member of Stakeholders in America, the American Energy Assurance Council, and Energy Security Policy. In 2014, Plank
465-597: The Raymond Plank Professorship of Global Energy Policy at Harvard ’s John F. Kennedy School of Government . He served as chairman of the Wyoming Futures Project and co-chairman of Minnesota Wellspring, was a founding member of Freedom Lift and Friends of Mesa Verde, and a member of the Denver Art Museum board of trustees. Plank has been a trustee of Carleton College , where Apache established
496-825: The School House. Ucross has hosted over 2,600 artists-in-residence from across the United States and the world. The Foundation participates in a number of long-term collaborations with other arts organizations, including the Sundance Institute Theatre Program, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (administered by CalArts and supported by the Herb Alpert Foundation), and the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction. Ucross also collaborates with
527-593: The early to mid-1980s. He later taught at St. Olaf College , Bennington College , Sarah Lawrence College , Bard College , and Harvard University . In 1991, he received the Lila Wallace – Reader's Digest Writer's Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Klinkenborg's books include More Scenes from the Rural Life ( Princeton Architectural Press ), Making Hay and The Last Fine Time . His book Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile concerns
558-453: The late 1950s, the company sold off its real estate holdings and began acquiring successful entrepreneurial businesses including small telephone companies, an auto parts chain, the tree crop business and aerosol can and plastic pipe companies. Conflict in the Middle East, the rise of OPEC and America’s increasing dependence on foreign oil led Plank to revise Apache’s strategy once again in
589-417: The late 1960s and early 1970s. The company gradually divested its non-energy holdings and by the late 1980s was focused exclusively on oil and gas. Apache funded much of its early growth through the creation of drilling funds, investment programs that provided significant tax advantages to unit holders. To provide its unit holders greater liquidity, in 1971 Apache formed Apache Exploration Company (Apexco) as
620-484: The oil and gas operating arm of its drilling programs. Apexco was innovative in that it provided the first-ever vehicle for program participants to exchange their illiquid units for publicly traded stock. In 1981, under Plank’s leadership, Apache created Apache Petroleum Company (APC), the nation’s first Master Limited Partnership (MLP). This new investment vehicle consolidated interests in 33 Apache oil and gas programs formed between 1959 and 1978. APC units were traded on
651-881: The opportunity to exchange their APC units for shares of Apache common stock. Over the next two decades, Apache grew rapidly by buying and exploiting property packages from the majors and extending its reach internationally, acquiring concessions in Egypt, Western Australia, China, the United Kingdom North Sea, Poland and Argentina. The company became one of the nation’s leading independent oil and gas concerns. Upon retiring as Chairman of Apache Corporation in January 2009, Plank dedicated his time to charitable work on behalf of Fund for Teachers, Ucross Foundation and to completing and publishing his memoirs, A Small Difference , in 2012. Proceeds from book sales support Fund for Teachers,
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#1732876057099682-716: The planting of thousands of trees on the ranch and the placement of a conservation easement on over 12,000 acres of the ranch with the Wyoming Chapter of The Nature Conservancy . In 2010, the Ucross Ranch, currently leased by the Apache Foundation , was named a finalist for the Leopold Conservation Award, given by the Sand County Foundation . The newest land initiative at Ucross involves the creation of
713-475: The program with $ 1 million. That pilot program has since grown into a public foundation called Fund for Teachers. In Egypt, where Apache is a leading oil and gas producer, thousands of young girls are getting their first opportunity for formal education in 201 one-room school buildings constructed by Springboard – Educating the Future, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization established by Plank. Plank also established
744-1414: The public and typically features exhibitions by Ucross Fellows. The Foundation was named a recipient of the Wyoming Governor’s Arts Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2005. Notable Ucross Fellows include Annie Proulx , Terry Tempest Williams , Elizabeth Gilbert , Theaster Gates , Anthony Hernandez , and Tayari Jones . National Book Award winners Susan Choi , Sigrid Nunez , and Sarah M. Broom have been residents, as have Academy Award and Tony winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul , Emmy Award winner Billy Porter , recent Pulitzer Prize winners Michael R. Jackson and Colson Whitehead , and three-term United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo . Others include Ron Carlson , Lan Samantha Chang , Du Yun , Joshua Ferris , Robert L. Freedman , Steve Giovinco , Perry Glasser , Francisco Goldman , Ricky Ian Gordon , Adam Guettel , Jessica Hagedorn , Porochista Khakpour , Michael Harrison , Emily Jacir , Stephen Jimenez , Ha Jin , Jeffe Kennedy , Byron Kim , Verlyn Klinkenborg , Tania Leon , Jason Moran , Bill Morrison , Ann Patchett , Sarah Ruhl , Mark So , Andrew Solomon , Manil Suri , Jean Valentine , Paula Vogel , Doug Wright , Charles Wuorinen , and Liz Young . Ucross has also supported numerous conservation initiatives, including
775-431: The public foundation he founded in 2001. Plank was married three times. His first wife was Sally Stevens, with whom he had five children, Katherine, Michael, Pamela, Roger and Dana (Roger followed in his father’s footsteps at Apache, where he was named president and chief corporate officer (CCO) in 2011 before retiring in 2014). Raymond Plank’s subsequent marriages were to Lollie Benz and Heather Burgess, with whom he had
806-574: The value of education, and Plank dedicated himself to a lifetime of learning. His mother died of a blood clot after a routine appendectomy when Plank was fifteen. Plank attended the Blake School in Minneapolis and credited his Latin instructor Noah Foss and other Blake teachers with providing the educational basis and academic discipline necessary for a successful life. Plank entered Yale University in September 1940 and after Pearl Harbor enlisted in
837-556: Was a member of the editorial board of The New York Times . Klinkenborg has published articles in The New Yorker , The New York Review of Books , Harper's Magazine , Esquire , National Geographic and Mother Jones magazines. He has written a series of editorial opinions in The New York Times ; these are generally literary meditations on rural farm life. On December 26, 2013, he announced in that column that it
868-814: Was born in Meeker, Colorado and raised on a farm in Iowa . He attended elementary school in Clarion, Iowa until the 6th grade before his family relocated to Osage, Iowa . His family then moved to Sacramento, California . Klinkenborg attended the University of California, Berkeley before earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature from Pomona College . He then earned a Ph.D from Princeton University , also in English literature. Klinkenborg taught literature and creative writing at Fordham University while living in The Bronx in
899-597: Was listed among Hart Publications’ 100 Most Influential People of the Petroleum Century. In 2009 Plank received the Award of Distinction from the University of Oklahoma ’s Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education . Plank died on November 8, 2018, at the age of 96. Verlyn Klinkenborg Verlyn Klinkenborg (born 1952 in Meeker, Colorado ) is an American non-fiction author , academic, and former newspaper editor, known for his writings on rural America . Klinkenborg
930-672: Was named the Houston Technology Center ’s Entrepreneur of the Year. He also received the St. Paul Newspaper Guild’s Man of the Year; the National Royalty Owners Association Energy Leader of the Year in 1995; Minnesota Entrepreneur of the Year; Wyoming Man of the Year; and National Jewish Hospital (Minnesota) Man of the Year. Plank was selected CEO of the Year on three occasions by The Wall Street Transcript and
961-430: Was to be the last he would be writing in that space. From 2006 to 2007, he was a visiting writer-in-residence at Pomona College , where he taught nonfiction writing. In 2007, he received a Guggenheim fellowship , which funded his book The Mermaids of Lapland , about William Cobbett . In 2012, he published “Several Short Sentences About Writing”. He currently teaches creative writing at Yale University and lives on