Frijole Ranch: First Settlers in the Guadalupes

Frijole Ranch, just inside Guadalupe Mountains National Park, represents the earliest Anglo settlement attempt on the southeast face of these mountains. The Rader brothers built the first ranch house here around eighteen seventy-six, digging in next to Frijole Spring , one of the only reliable water sources in the region. They were probably the first permanent settlers on this side of the Guadalupes. The complex they left behind includes the original ranch house, a bunkhouse, a barn, a springhouse, and a schoolhouse, making it the most complete surviving early ranching complex in the park.

The Raders left in the late eighteen eighties, and the property sat vacant until the Smith family arrived in nineteen oh six, renaming it Spring Hill Ranch and running it as a community center and regional post office until nineteen forty-two. When Wallace Pratt donated his adjacent McKittrick Canyon land to the National Park Service, the Frijole Ranch area came with it. Today the ranch house holds a small history museum, and the spring still flows.