New Mexico: The Nunn Ranch

I cross the railroad tracks parallel to the two-lane highway, and the road immediately turns to gravel. Soon I pull up to an empty house. It seems that no one is around, so I climb out of my truck, wondering where I should start looking for the owners.

Suddenly a young girl zooms out from behind a storage building on a four-wheel ATV. Sliding to a stop in a cloud of dust, she calls, “You lookin’ for Joe Bill?”

“Yes, where can I find him?”

“Follow me,” she shouts and takes off before I can get back in my truck. Down the road, I see her waiting for me at a cattle guard. This is Joe Bill and Lauren Nunn’s granddaughter Kelsey—the teenage gal who knows how to run everything from the ranch’s backhoes to the big semi trucks and also keeps up on horseback with all the cowboys. She is the sixth generation of her family to ranch in New Mexico.

Check out the full story of this and 29 other great ranches across the west in the award wining book, “Great Ranches of the West”.

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