This article is featured on the cover of the Summer 2025 issue of Texas LAND magazine. Click here to find out more.
Encompassing 19,995± acres in western Presidio County about 65 miles from Marfa, historic Rancho Viejo offers a magnificent desert mountain setting featuring live water and exceptional hunting. Pioneered by the Loveless family and made famous by the Boyd-Chambers family who called this area home for more than a century, the ranch is deeply woven into the history of this region where Pancho Villa once raided, and Texas Range Joe Sittre died.
Tucked under the grand Sierra Vieja Rim, the ranch lies within a broad and rugged broken valley bordered on the west by the Sierra Madre Mountain range of Mexico and to the east by the Sierra Vieja Mountains of West Texas. The Rio Grande, a few miles to the west of the ranch, meanders through the middle of the valley. The ranch has around 2,800 feet of elevation change from 6,000 to 3,200 feet with amazing geology—outcrops, cliffs and plateaus surrounded by mountains in all directions.
Rancho Viejo is an excellent cross-section of the various habitats found in the high-, mid- and lower-elevation of West Texas. The landscape includes everything that makes the region a natural wonderland from rock outcrops and riparian woodlands laced with spring-fed live water creeks to rolling yucca grasslands, desert canyons and scrublands.
Arriving at the front gate, you get a sense of the vastness of the neighborhood and take in some of the most scenic views in North America. More than 250 miles of new roads have been improved or built, ensuring accessibility throughout the ranch.
This Far West Texas ranch is dominated by Chihuahuan Desert grasslands. The vegetative mix includes blue gramma, green sprangletop, tobosa, black gramma, chino gramma and sideoats gramma with diverse native trees of oak, juniper, mesquite, desert willow, soapberry, hackberry, ash and Mexican walnut.
Arriving at the front gate, you get a sense of the vastness of the neighborhood and take in some of the most scenic views in North America
Wildlife, Water and Minerals
Because it combines mountain habitats with grassland and desert habitats, this ranch has some of the best all-around hunting opportunities in West Texas. Situated in big mule deer country, Rancho Viejo is already enrolled in the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s Managed Lands Deer Program for extended hunting opportunities.
Abundant mule deer, aoudad, mountain lions and javelina can all be found here. Smaller animal and bird species, which include fox, ringtail cat, coyote, dove, Gambel’s quail and many, many large conveys of blue or scaled quail, can be found on the wooded canyon floors. Migrating neotropical songbirds use the corridors of water and vegetation making this a birder’s paradise.
Historically, Rancho Viejo has attracted wildlife as well Native Americans and early ranchers because of its springs including Musgrave, Walker, Cold Water, McCombs and Anna Springs, which all still flow strongly today. In fact, Rancho Viejo is watered entirely by spring water and has been modernized with the underground installation of more than 135 miles of new DR9 fusion-welded poly pipe leading to a network of storage tanks and troughs. Additionally, the springs provide miles of live water in the creeks and canyons. Plus, a very large flowing hot artesian well, which comes out at 200° F, and flows for miles to the Rio Grande.
The ranch possesses 6,400 acres of Mineral Classified minerals. There are no leases or production on the ranch
The Living
The freshly renovated headquarters has a three-bedroom, two-bath main house with stone patios in front and back. The headquarters are in Musgrave Canyon below Anna Springs, which heads up at the top of the Sierra Vieja Mountains. The headquarters is sited to take advantage of the canyon effect where cool air drops down into the canyon and creates a naturally cool environment because the sun is slow to hit the canyon floor and quick to disappear in the afternoon.
A recently remodeled two-bunkroom/two-bath lodge with wide wraparound porches and a huge great room with kitchen and stone fireplace serves as the ranch’s entertainment center. Additional improvements include a large walk-in cooler with a deer cleaning station, several barns and outbuildings and a foreman’s house all in excellent condition. Some personal property, furnishings, feeders and equipment will convey with the ranch.
Rancho Viejo is natural wonderland offering wildlife, live water, rich history and breath-taking mountain views with all the elbow room that makes Far West Texas famous. For those seeking recreation and respite, it is the perfect place to hang your hat.
19,995± Acres
Presidio County, Texas
$13,496,625
James King, Agent
432-386-2821 • Info@KingLandWater.com
KingLandWater.com
