 Willis married his neighbor Virginia Bell Benton, and they settled on 260 acres (1 km²) near Sheridan in northern Wyoming.Elsa and her two brothers and sister grew up on a ranch that eventually expanded to include millions of acres of land, most of it leased from the government.When Elsa was two, her father and his family formed the Spear Brothers Cattle Company, which leased over a million acres (4,000 km²) of Crow Indian Reservation land in Montana along with a number of ranches along the Powder River and Clearmont.