Guadalupe Ranch
a.k.a. Frijole Ranch and Rader/Smith Ranch
NE of Salt Flat in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Salt Flat, TXThe front portion of the ranch house is the oldest substantial structure in the area. Constructed around 1876 by the Rader brothers (who were probably the first permanent settlers in that portion of the Guadalupe Mountains), it constitutes the most complete and significant vestige of the early cattle ranching enterprise in the southern Guadalupe Mountains.
Ranching in this area began along with the range cattle industry which developed on the southern plains during the 1870s and 1880s. The stock grown in the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas went either by trails eastward to railheads in central Texas and then to eastern consumers, or northward along the Goodnight-Loving Trail to the northern plains to increase the herds in that area. Dating from the mid-1870s, the Frijole Ranch complex comprises a vivid and tangible reminder of local involvement in a booming post-Civil War economy that helped to open and develop the Great Plains.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.