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Lane's Bell Ranch

In 1824, the Mexican government granted former Spanish army Captain Pablo Montoya more than 600,000 acres near Tucumcari, New Mexico. The Bell Ranch, named for the bell-shaped butte on the property, is now owned by Bill Lane's five children. New Mexico's biggest ranch led to a legacy with its own zip code, its own breed of cattle, and its own star-studded place in western history.

In 1872, Wilson Waddingham, a wealthy investor, brought cattle to the arid New Mexico spread he had purchased from Santa Fe attorney John S. Watts. Originally from Eastern Canada, Waddingham lived in Denver at the time, and he imagined making a killing by running cattle on the nearly half-million acres he bought for $34,000 cash and by subdividing the property into irrigated "ranchettes" that he would sell to farmers from Northern Europe.

Waddy's initial purchase involved the Baca Number Two (99,290 acres) and seven-twelfths of the Pablo Montoya Grant (655,468 acres), two Mexican land grants made during the early part of the 19th century and acquired by Watts, a former chief justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, in return for legal services in the 1860s. (Pablo Montoya had petitioned for the grant, indicating his intention to develop the land into a ranch and offer protection from the Indians, who used the land as a hunting ground. Montoya never developed the land, and it is widely believed that the Montoyas never occupied it.)

Waddingham — a rapacious cattle baron who believed the West and his holdings were so vast he could graze unlimited numbers of animals — saw the ranch as a business asset to exploit. In short order he registered several brands, including the iconic Bell (registered in 1875), designed to mimic the striated bell-shaped butte jutting from the desert floor near the center of the property. He would eventually purchase several adjacent parcels, making Bell Ranch — or "The Grant" as locals call it — at about three-quarters of a million acres, one of the largest ranches in New Mexico, if not the West. He began bringing in cattle by the thousands to populate his land.

The Ketchum Gang Like the Wild Bunch, the Ketchum Gang was made up of a revolving cast of members. The core of the gang centered around “Black Jack” Tom Ketchum and his brother Sam. Wild Bunch alumnus Will Carver, Elzy Lay and Ben Kilpatrick rode with the Ketchum’s as well. Other members included Dan Johnson, Sam Marr, Tom Thomas and Ed Bullion – brother of Laura Bullion, Ben Kilpatrick’s girlfriend. Both Sam Ketchum and his brother Tom before joing the Wild Bunch, had been cowboys on the giant Bell Ranch on the Canadian River north of present day Tucumcari. The month following Sam's robbery of the Flyer, Tom, not knowing of the prior robbery or his brother's capture and death, attempted to rob the same train. Wounded by a shotgun blast fired by the railway conductor, he was captured the next day. He was sentenced to hang. He appealed on the basis that the death penalty for robbing a train was disproportionate to the crime and, thus, constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The New Mexico Territorial Supreme Court denied the appeal and held that cruel and unusual punishment consisted of such things as: drawing and quartering the culprit, burning him at the stake, cutting off his nose, ears, or limbs, starving him to death, or such as was inflicted by an act of parliament as late as Henry VIII., authorizing one Rouse to be thrown into boiling water and boiled to death for the offense of poisoning the family of the bishop of Rochester.

Times were wild in the early days of the ranch. There was no fencing, so cattle roamed the open range. Comanche, Cheyenne, Apache, and Kiowa Indians — the first inhabitants of this beautiful, austere desert — rustled cattle and terrorized locals. Anglo and Latino rustlers stole cattle, too. Waddy and his men fought back aggressively, killing Indians and harassing Spanish-speaking settlers. It was a lawless time.

With cattle prices skyrocketing and hopes running high for discovering new ways to irrigate the land, Waddy dreamed of transforming the desert in eastern New Mexico into a thriving metropolis. At the same time, Bell Ranch's manager, Mike Slattery, worked to improve the herd by bringing in Shorthorn steer, and the ranch began gaining a reputation for good beef stock.

At one point Slattery estimated that Bell Ranch housed as many as 52,000 head on 754,758 acres, though later estimates numbered the herd at about 25,000. Eventually, Waddingham's grandiose visions, other business interests, and the inevitable collapse of the cattle market waylaid his hopes for a lush green desert teeming with enterprise, but they left a legendary cattle operation.

Waddy's reign ended with a takeover by New York financiers John H. Greenough and James Brown Potter in 1893-94. Having heard of Arthur Tisdall's reputation as general manager of the famous JA, JJ, and Tule ranches, the East Coast businessmen asked Tisdall to visit and report back on the "Montoya Ranch," which, it turned out, was in poor condition, heavily in debt, and populated by only a straggly herd. Tisdall fell in love with the purple and rose sunsets and sage-scented desert and would become the first in a lineage of savvy ranch managers whose careful stewardship and pioneering animal management would make the Bell one of the finest cattle operations in the country.

In four short years, Tisdall repaired buildings and equipment he and his Scottish wife expanded the adobe-and-brick headquarters — the white house — into a more comfortable abode), cared for the range, brought a semblance of safety to the land, and restored the herd. He died of pneumonia in 1898.

Charles M. O'Donel, an Irishman like Tisdall, arrived at the ranch in mid-1898 and remained the property's general manager until 1932. He presided over a transition to new ownership, a complicated and murky transaction whereby the ranch moved into the hands of a Connecticut investment group — the Red River Valley Company. O'Donel, though, carried out Greenough's strategy for the ranch through the early years of the Depression as a calf-and-cattle operation.

O'Donel and his second wife raised two daughters, with the women splitting their time between Denver during the school year and the ranch during the summer. The girls learned to rope and brand cattle. Their father transformed the ranch, using the best of technology at the time. He developed irrigated and dry land farms on the ranch; built fences, windmills, wells, and buildings; and experimented with breeding to improve the herd.

In early 1932, O'Donel semi-retired, and Philip C. Garrett, an experienced manager from the WS Ranch near Cimarron, New Mexico, took over the outdoor operations while O'Donel managed the office. The two managers disagreed about how to feed and wean their stock, and Julius Day, who presided over the Red River Valley Company, let Garrett go. This move led the Red River Valley board to hire Albert Mitchell, a veteran ranch manager who ran the Bell from 1933 until Red River sold the ranch in 1946.

Both O'Donel and Mitchell held the land in high regard. In spite of the grim realities of the Depression, O'Donel romanticized the agrarian lifestyle, believing it to be inherently superior to urban industrialization. Mitchell was a conservationist who wanted to bring the range back to its former beauty and health.

In the 1930s, the "Hacienda" — a rustic, Southwestern retreat — was built for entertaining famous guests. With gorgeous views of Bell Mountain, the 10,832-square-foot stone-walled building, which included eight bedrooms and a facility called "The Casino," welcomed the likes of Clark Gable, Shirley Temple, Roy Rogers, and Howard Hughes. The ranch would also serve as the backdrop for episodes of the TV series Rawhide and as a location for "Marlboro Man" ad shoots.

After WWII, with the Red River Valley owners aging and new progressive taxes making ownership of such large tracts cost-prohibitive, the ranch was split into six parcels to make it easier to sell, the parcels partitioned in such a way that each owner received a spring or a well. Most of the current holding, including the ranch headquarters and the brand, came under the ownership of Mrs. Harriet E. Keeney, who served as president of Bell Ranch, Inc., until 1970. George F. Ellis managed the operation for Mrs. Keeney. He initiated a cutting- edge production testing program (a kind of scoring system for beef production) for range cattle improvement, apparently the first of its kind in America.

William N. Lane of Lane Industries, Inc., purchased the Keeney portion of the ranch and adjacent parcels in seven transactions between 1970-77, amassing the current Bell Ranch acreage. In 1970, the headquarters buildings were placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Under Lane, Don D. Hofman ran the ranch as a real working ranch for the production of fine cattle. He adhered to Lane's commitment to Herefords, a tradition that went back to the Hereford bulls Tisdall trailed to the ranch in 1894, while also experimenting with Longhorn bulls.

Rusty Tinnin assumed the ranch manager job in 1986. The ranch is still owned by the Lane family and is managed by Bert Ancell, who has lived and worked on the ranch since 1968. The old post office for Bell Ranch's own 88431 zip code, though now closed, still stands — one of the oldest in the state — and an on-site museum houses artifacts, tools, and memorabilia dating back to the early ranch cowboys of the mid-19th century.

Ranching continues in the old way at Bell Ranch. The cattle are a bit different — a breed unto themselves called the Red Bell — approximately 7/16 Red Angus, 4/16 Hereford, 3/16 Brahman, and 2/16 Gelbvieh. Cowboys still drive the herds over the land by horse — not ATVs — and calves are roped and branded using traditional techniques. The people and the land now look much the same as they did when Wilson Waddingham first sought to exploit this swath of New Mexico desert and instead spawned a legacy.

Leslie Petrovski. Bell Ranch. . December 2008.

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