A small town at the foot of the Guadalupes where cattle country runs all the way to the horizon in every direction.
Van Horn is the Culberson County seat, a small town on I-10 where the flat desert begins to tilt upward toward the Guadalupe Mountains. It's not big — under 2,000 residents — but for its size it's at the center of one of the largest ranching counties in Texas.
The town sits on the old transportation corridor between El Paso and points east, and it still serves that role today: I-10 in front, UP rail behind, and ranch gates running north and south for as far as the eye can see.
Culberson County was carved out of El Paso County in 1911, with Van Horn chosen as county seat the next year. When the Texas and Pacific Railway reached the area, ranchers pushed into the Guadalupe Mountains, and Van Horn quickly grew into a prosperous cattle-shipping center. Ranching has always counted for more here than farming.
Today Culberson County still carries 74 farms and ranches spread across 1.69 million acres — an enormous ratio of land to operations. In the 1930s, local stockmen pioneered the use of spreader dams, earthen berms built across arroyos to slow and spread runoff. It's a rainwater-conservation trick still used on Trans-Pecos ranches today.
From our fields in Saragosa to Van Horn is about an hour west on I-10. It's the same interstate we run to Pecos and Fort Stockton, just the other direction — Ray knows it well.
If you're running cattle anywhere in the Guadalupe foothills, keeping horses around Van Horn, or managing a ranch operation that needs consistent, quality hay, we can put you up a load of premium custom alfalfa from our Saragosa fields. Multiple cuttings, mid-sized square bales, forage testing on request.
Give Ray a call or drop a note. We'll tell you what's on hand, what's coming in the next cutting, and when we can get a load west to you.