The ranch was near Jenner Alberta in the short-grass country. The Stapletons got into disputes with the government over Crown grazing leases. They paid the same amount per acre rent as the long-grass leases to the west. Those Rocky Mountain foothills leases could graze several animals per acre. The sandy soils and lack of rain meant in Southeast Alberta meant that it took ten acres to support one cow.

The ranch lasted from 1906 to 1938; through the good times of the Roaring Twenties, to the dust bowl days and the terrible winters of Dirty Thirties. The Jim Spratt letters that were written at the Horse Camp twenty miles east of the homestead. The mail went on the train from Buffalo to Jenner. Parts of this area is now the British Block, also known as the Suffield Military Range. In the Jim Spratt letters, he descibes the winters and how he could barely get around to feed the horses and pick up stray cows. By 1937, there weren't many cows left. The Stapletons couldn't hold on. In the spring of 1938 they just abandoned the ranch and left to work in the Turner Valley oil fields.

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the Lone Star Ranch Story.