By Maddy McCarty
On Saturday April 11, the National Ranching Heritage Center held its 45th annual Ranch Day. The event celebrated prairie life, and gave visitors a look into West Texas’s past.
Cara Vandergriff contributed to this post.
Texas Tech’s National Ranching Heritage Center celebrated our state’s rich history of ranching with its 45th annual Ranch Day on April 11.
The yearly celebration, which draws in over 4,000 visitors and 150 volunteers annually, brings alive the ranching history of Texas with historical interpretations and hands-on experiences for guests of all ages.
The event included interactive “ranch science,” “ranch skill” and “ranch history” activities and demonstrations that included a Dutch oven demonstration, a ranch horse team performance and chuck wagon cooking lessons.
Event guests were also able to explore the center’s many historic buildings and learn their history from volunteers dressed in traditional ranching attire.
Gary Wright, a ranch host at this year’s event, said Ranch Day is held every year to spread knowledge to the public about the history of ranching in a fun and interactive way. He said the tradition of hosting Ranch Day has existed about as long as the Ranching Heritage Center has.
“When this project was started, it was started by the people in the history department at Texas Tech,” Wright said. “Originally it was called the Ranch Headquarters, and we had a bunch of historians that got together and went around the state trying to find historic structures that would capture ranching before it disappeared.”
So became the National Ranching Heritage Center, a 27-acre museum and historical park with almost 50 authentic dwellings and ranch structures dating from the late 18th to the mid-20th century, including a railroad depot, homesteads, a barn, a schoolhouse and windmills. The center offers educational programs and exhibits to promote interest in both ranching history and contemporary ranching.
From learning to churn butter, wash clothes on a washboard and pump a railroad handcar, visitors at Ranch Day were able to experience the lives of their ranching ancestors in an enjoyable and educational way.
Kelsi Thompson, a Ranch Day attendee, said though she enjoyed all of the interactive activities, her favorite part of the day was getting to tour the historic ranch homes.
“I thought the houses were so neat and authentic,” Thompson said. “It was cool to be able to walk around inside them and imagine what it would have been like to live there.”
Ranch Day and the National Ranching Heritage Center are supported by the Ranching Heritage Association and Texas Tech University. More information is available at www.nrhc.ttu.edu.
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