Elk Mountain Herbs

Karin Guernsey was working in the Wyoming state archaeologist's office, interpreting ancient American Indian sites through plant evidence, when she and Carolyn Johnson started Elk Mountain Herbs in 1994. Guernsey is a trained ethnobotanist — she knows Rocky Mountain medicinal plants the way most people know their neighborhood streets. That knowledge became the foundation of a supplement company in Laramie, Wyoming that's now been running for three decades.

They grow herbs in certified organic gardens in the Elk Mountain and Snowy Range area of southern Wyoming and wild-harvest species that thrive at elevation. About 70 local plant species make it into the product line, many of them uncommon botanicals you won't find in a typical supplement catalog. The connection between plant and product is direct: they know the soil, the altitude, the growing season of every herb they use.

The operation produces over 200 single herbal tinctures in-house, plus formulas, capsules, dried herbs, and topicals. Tinctures are the core — made from plants they've grown or gathered, processed in their Laramie facility. The certifications back it up: Certified Organic through the Global Organic Alliance, FDA-inspected, licensed by the Wyoming Department of Agriculture.

You can buy online or visit The Herb House, their storefront in downtown Laramie. It's the kind of shop where the person behind the counter can tell you exactly which hillside a plant came from and why they processed it a specific way.

The herbal supplement market is crowded with brands that source globally and manufacture at industrial scale. Elk Mountain Herbs works on the opposite model — small production, local sourcing, deep botanical knowledge. Kim Vincent joined as co-owner, and the team has stayed small enough that the people making the products are the same people who harvested the plants.

No outside investors, no corporate parent, no PE involvement. The founders are still active. Thirty years in, they're still making herbal medicine from Rocky Mountain plants the same way they started.

Products

• Over 200 single herbal tinctures (many from Wyoming medicinal plants)
• Adaptogenic herb tinctures (American Ginseng, Ashwagandha, Eleuthero, etc.)
• Multi-herb formula blends (digestive, immune, nervous system support)
• Herbal capsules
• Dried bulk herbs
• Topical herbal preparations

Why We List Them

• Independently owned and woman-owned since 1994
• Co-founded by a trained ethnobotanist with deep plant knowledge
• Certified Organic by Global Organic Alliance, FDA-inspected
• Grows and wild-harvests herbs from their own organic gardens in the Wyoming Rockies
• Over 200 tinctures, many featuring rare and hard-to-find Rocky Mountain botanicals
• No corporate parent, no private equity, no outside investors
• In-house production from harvest through finished product