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Where the Chihuahuan Desert of West Texas meets the eastern escarpment of the Guadalupe Mountains, a cluster of springs makes a shady oasis. At Frijole Ranch, now in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, large chinquapin oaks enclose the house and yard — and for decades a family grew apples, pears, peaches, plums, apricots, and even lemons and oranges, all on spring water.
Frijole Ranch, looking west from the orchard toward the ranch house, 2009. Credit: NPS/J. Cowley.
Water decided everything
The harsh, isolated landscape limited who could settle here, and settlement followed the water: widely scattered seasonal camps, family farms and large ranches, each around a spring. Middens and cooking pits show that Mescalero Apache people used the site. Several ranching operations passed through in the late 1880s without leaving much mark.
The Smiths' farmstead
In 1906, according to General Land Office records, John T. Smith applied to buy the land and built a self-sufficient family farm and ranch around two springs and a system of troughs and ditches. It became a hub for the scattered community:
| 1916 | the Frijole Post Office opens at the ranch; a carrier brings mail from Carlsbad, New Mexico, three times a week, and Nella Smith serves as postmaster until 1941 |
| 1921 | a schoolhouse is built beside the ranch house |
| late 1920s | Highway 62 finally connects the area's ranch families — and brings drivers bound for Carlsbad Caverns |
| 1942 | the Smiths sell to J.C. Hunter, Jr., whose partners fold Frijole into a 72,000-acre commercial ranch; foreman Noel Kincaid and his family live there |
The orchard
The Smiths probably planted a garden and orchard soon after arriving, enclosed by a stacked-stone wall topped with a wooden fence to keep out livestock. They irrigated from the springs and fertilized with manure from their cows. The trees included many apples — Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Winesap, Royal Gala, crab apples, a seedless variety and others — along with pear, wild cherry, peach, plum, apricot, lemon and orange. Alfalfa grew beneath the trees, cut by scythe for the livestock. Apples were canned, or wrapped in paper, boxed and kept in a root cellar for winter, and John Smith seems to have experimented with grafting. His son Joe T. Smith recalled that his father replaced many trees in early 1942; pecans and persimmons may have been planted then too.
Frijole Ranch in the mid-1920s, based on Joe T. Smith's recollections and a 1940s aerial photograph. Credit: NPS.
Neglect and replanting
As part of a commercial ranch from 1941 to 1969, the orchard was used but no longer relied on, and it was not maintained. By the park's 1994 Cultural Landscape Report, a single Smith-era apple tree survived. The report recommended reintroducing fruit trees in the historic layout with historic methods. In February 2006, a century after the Smiths arrived, 13 Eagle Scouts put in about 60 hours planting apple, pear and cherry trees and improving the soil and irrigation, guided by oral history, the report and nurseries' advice on historic varieties. Wildlife has since forced several replacements.
Site plan of existing conditions at the Frijole Ranch cultural landscape at the time of the 1994 Cultural Landscape Report. NPS.
Keeping it
Park Superintendent Eric Leonard sees the orchard as essential to understanding the ranch. It needs the same regular care the Smiths gave it — shaping trees, keeping grass short around them against pests, testing whether irrigation is leaching nutrients — in a remote park with limited resources and, unlike some places, no descendant community or local friends group to help.
Sources
Based on "Frijole Ranch Orchard" from the National Park Service (Guadalupe Mountains National Park), a work of the United States government in the public domain. Pictures an earlier version of this page left out were restored on 2026-09-26.
Licenza: CC0 1.0 (pubblico dominio) · Tratto da www.nps.gov
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