Located 30 miles south of Santa Rosa along the Pecos River Valley under the vast New Mexican sky, we offer Luxury Camping on over 300 acres of horse and wagon trails in an old west setting awash in history. Famous outlaws such as Billy The Kid traveled our canyons and valleys to avoid the law while visiting friends in nearby Puerto de Luna. A rider kept his six-shooter and Winchester handy as the area, possibly the last in the country to get law and order, was overrun with gunmen and Comanche Indians until the 1920s. The last recorded attack by Comanche raiders resulting in loss of life was in 1918, six years after Statehood!

            Bordering State Lands with large tracts of Public Lands an hour’s ride away, you can go through our gate and think you have time-traveled to the late 1800s, where you can ride to your heart’s content.
             
            At day’s end, come back to your private luxury cabin complete with bath, kitchen, forced-air heat, ceiling fans, a screened 8 feet deep by 14 feet wide covered porch,  and grill over a campfire at your picnic table while enjoying our beautiful canyon views, then get in the Nordic hot tub for a long soak to ease away the tensions of urban life.

            You can join your hosts for pre-dinner drinks and select California wines while watching the spectacular sunsets New Mexico is famous for. Later on, gaze upon a million stars in a sky too big to see all at once, then retire to your territorial style cedar cabin with it’s lodgepole pine queen bed and discover what true peace and quiet is.

            You can catch the sunrise or sleep in, whatever your desire. Prepare your breakfast in a real kitchen equipped with four burner stove and oven, custom sink and counter, a six cubic foot refrigerator/freezer and all the western style pots and pans, tableware and dishes to be completely independent during your stay. We want you to feel free to come and go as you like and organize your own schedule.

            There really are too many things to do to list them all here, but they include hiking, riding horseback, wagon rides, birding (we’ve counted over 50 species so far), looking for arrowheads and petrified wood, going on a cattle round up and attending demonstrations of western skills such as horse shoeing, saddle making, wild crafting or trying your hand at calf-penning.

            Bring your horses with you and experience the ultimate pleasure of saddling up and taking off for the day to ride through ranch lands and canyons on dirt roads for miles with no more interruption than to get down to open a horse gate. We have rides mapped out from a few miles to large loops that take you to Public Lands (BLM), where you can make a camp overnight, returning to the ranch the next day for a hot shower and good grub, and then hit the trail again for a new adventure. We’ll provide a five panel corral so your stock can be kept separate and healthy. The water from our wells is sweet and healthful to man and beast. If your rig has self-contained living quarters, you can use our pump out facility to empty and flush tanks, then wash the rig and fill your tanks and together we will pick out a scenic spot to get off by yourselves with a portable corral . When necessary, you can refill and recharge, then leave with a clean rig and full tanks.
          Salado Canyon Ranch is not a working ranch; we are too small at 300+ acres to raise more than a few dozen cattle. We are not the typical “Dude” ranch either. We raise and train mostly quarter horses for our own use and for the use of our guests. We are from ranching country in California and sail our 40 foot sloop “Glorious” about three months of the year. We are absolutely goofy-in-love with New Mexico and invite you to share with us this wonderful slice of the Old West.