The Fort Union Ranch has been in the same family’s hands for a century and a half. The Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail – whose ruts can be easily seen from State Rt 161 – crosses the ranch.  At the ranch’s center can be found the Fort Union Nat’l Monument, run by the Nat’l Park Service, which was strategically located, in 1851, at the convergence of the trail’s Mountain and Cimarron Branches.  The arrival of the railroad in 1879 effectively ended both the trail’s and fort’s rationale.

Due to the ranch’s size of 95,000 acres, and integrity (never having been sold and subdivided), the views  are essentially the same as they were for caravans on the trail and soldiers at Fort Union during the Civil War.

I invited some friends and family out for a September week of Indian Summer in New Mexico.  [please hover over images for captions]