The JA Ranch 6/8/21

One of the coolest things we experienced during our time in the Texas Panhandle was finding the JA Ranch Headquarters.  This has been a bucket list item for Mark, especially after becoming familiar with the Lonesome Dove characters who were modeled after Charles Goodnight and John Adair. 

For probably 45 years, Mark has told me about Montie Ritchie, owner of the JA Ranch in the Texas Palo Duro Canyon area.  Mark maintained and worked on Montie’s Beechcraft King Airs at Denver Beechcraft in the 70’s and 80’s and knew him personally during his time there. 

We found this bust at a museum in Canyon.

 

Mr Ritchie was an Englishman who walked through the hangar in his Gatsby hat always properly dressed and the perfect gentleman, somewhat different tan what you would expect from a huge Texas ranch and cattle owner.

Two people seemed to understand how much this meant to us, Wayne Nance, Brisco County judge, and the elderly man Mark approached in front of the Dollar General where we were buying Wayne cookies!  Not only was this gentleman able to tell us exactly how to get to the headquarters, but Montie Ritchie was a personal friend of his. I wish we would have gotten his name. 

Had we not had his spoken directions and my iPhone for verification we would have not known to “take a right when you come up out of the canyon” and keep driving over those country roads which finally dropped us at the doorstep of Montie’s daughter’s home at the JA Ranch headquarters. 

We had tried coming down from Claude the day we visited the Goodnight Ranch but did not know where we were going and ended up on private roads.

The roads were county roads, but were a little less maintained than we are used to!  We were pretty excited to finally end up at the headquarters.

The owner was not there that day but we were fortunate to meet a lady who works there at the ranch and have her show us around a bit.  I don’t remember her name!

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It was a great day!  We loved finding this and learning more about the ranch and Montie Ritchie. (We have since done more reading also.)  This, plus our tour of the Charles Goodnight Ranch, and our walking tour at the Fort Worth Stock Yards years ago has brought a lot of this history full circle for us.  Believe it or not, it even makes “Lonesome Dove” more interesting as we make the comparisons to real people!  I had no interest in history growing up, but now I love it when it comes alive!