Universal Ranch

A few nice arizona ranch images I found:

Welcome to the Faraway Ranch, Chiricahua National Monument, Arizona USA

Image by Crunchy Footsteps
homemade paint can pinhole camera, paper negative, 15 second exposure. The negative was developed in the tabletop darkroom with standard chemistry, and a digitally-photographed sky, sepia toning, and paper texture were added in Photoshop.

Emma and Neil Erickson both came from Sweden in the 1860s-70s (separately) before marrying and homesteading a ranch in the Chiricahua Mountains in southeastern Arizona.

THeir home began as an existing cabin (which became part of this larger house) on the property that Emma had purchased on her own. Thick walls were later built by Neil, to act as protection against Apache raids, which commonly occurred in this area at the time. The wall was eventually incorporated into the structure of the house as it expanded over the years.

Emma and Neil’s two daughters expanded the house to it’s current configuration when they made it a guest ranch in their young adult years.

We had a wonderful tour of the Erickson Home: the well-named Faraway Ranch- this past weekend.

Image made July 24, 2010

Lonely Dell Ranch – Lee’s Ferry Arizona

Image by Al_HikesAZ
This is one of the buildings preserved on the Lonely Dell Ranch historic park at Lee’s Ferry Arizona. The early Mormon pioneer – John Doyle Lee and his wives lived in this area. One wife is said to have remarked – when first seeing this site – that this was such a "Lonely Dell" and the name stuck. The site is comprised of several buildings, an orchard a cemetery and restored irrigation projects.

The Lonely Dell Ranch and Lees Ferry Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is managed by the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

Lee’s Ferry provided the crossing of the Colorado River until 1929 when the original Navajo Bridge was built. Many Mormon settlers in Arizona made the trip to the LDS Temple in St. George Utah to solemnize their marriage and this route became known as "The Honeymoon Trail".

Zane Grey wrote about the Lee’s Ferry crossing in The Last of the Plainsmen (1908):
I saw the constricted rapids, where the Colorado took its plunge into the box-like head of the Grand Canyon of Arizona; and the deep, reverberating boom of the river, at flood height, was a fearful thing to hear. I could not repress a shudder at the thought of crossing above that rapid.