Bill Clark wanted to be a rancher ever since he was tall enough to feed calves at his grandfather’s dairy farm. He met the love of his life, a rancher’s daughter named Betty, in the sixth grade. Over the course of their 55-year love affair, Bill and Betty’s dreams took root at Rising Sun Ranch. 

In each other they had found someone equally committed to leaving their land and livestock better than they found them. Their ranch grew to about 5,800 acres of native rangelands with the help of their sons, Will and Garrett. 

Bill has been lauded as an innovator for adopting prescribed burning and rotational grazing practices while providing leadership to conservation organizations. However, he says none of it would have been possible without Betty, who died tragically in 2024. 

The Rising Sun Ranch’s welcome sign matches its cattle brand, four rays atop a rising sun: one for Betty, Bill, and their boys.   

It was 20 years ago that Bill came to appreciate how fire could rejuvenate native grasses. A friend who was an experienced practitioner of prescribed fire wrestled the drip torch from Bill’s hesitant hand and ignited the prairie at Rising Sun Ranch. Ever since, Bill has been a proponent of preserving prairie by setting it ablaze every few years. He has hosted workshops and field days for conservation professionals and fellow ranchers through his involvement with the Pontotoc Ridge Prescribed Burning Association.

Following a spring burn, Bill uses a retrofitted Great Plains drill to seed Eastern Gamagrass. The “ice cream grass”, as it’s known, is a nutritious, highly palatable, forage for grazing livestock and wildlife. Its deep root system improves soil health, retain moistures, and supports beneficial fungi. It also provides crucial habitat and food for birds and insects. In recent years Bill has documented the repopulation of Texas horned lizards, quail, and turkeys to Rising Sun Ranch. 

Drilling wells and installing about 30 watering facilities allowed the Clarks to divide their ranch into 60-100-acre paddocks. Cattle and sheep are rotated to a fresh paddock twice weekly during the growing season, and once per week during the dormant season. 

Instead of applying herbicide to control weeds, Bill has found the grazing sheep and cattle works as a tag team against invasive species. Another way the Clarks use livestock to work with the natural ecosystem has been by breeding their cows with Lowline American Aberdeen bulls. Their moderate framed and maternally focused offspring require less grass and feed. 

Bill knows that his efforts to rejuvenate grasslands look inefficient to some, but he sees agricultural conservation as the pathway to returning the landscape to how it was “before county roads, barbed wire, and rural fire departments.”

Others have taken notice of how Bill has navigated increasingly volatile weather, embraced new ways of grazing livestock and controlling invasive species. In its nomination of Bill for the Leopold Conservation Award, the Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts wrote, “Bill’s pursuit of knowledge about the living world around him and willingness to try new practices is unwavering.” 

Rising Sun Ranch is more than an oasis of lush green prairie and pastures in south central Oklahoma. It’s the living embodiment of one couple’s dream.