Bell Ranch (New Mexico) - Art and Literature

Art and Literature

Over the centuries, the Bell Ranch has attracted many notable artists and writers with its beauty and unique qualities. Canadian artist Robert Lougheed visited the ranch numerous times taking inspiration from the horses, people and places to create a body of work recognized by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. In the 1940s, famed photographer Harvey Caplin took images in black and white. Some of these have been used by the Stetson Hat Company for promotion since that time as the quintessential western iconography.

In 1975, a film called Cowboy Heaven was filmed by David Ellis about the true western cowboy featuring the ranch and the then current cowboys of the Bell. The American Quarter Horse Journal has published well illustrated articles about the ranch on several occasions as had the Western Horseman magazine.

George Ellis wrote about his experiences in the book, The Bell Ranch As I Knew It, covering the Bell operations during his tenure. The book itself won the '74 Wrangler Award for Best Western Book of the Year from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. He wrote "The Bell is a good ranch - one of the best in the Southwest. Cattle people and college people from all over the world came to visit there." He lists countries represented by these frequent visitors from an impressive five continents. He concludes "The demands and privileges of the Bell touched all our lives - and left them richer."

In addition to the works by Culley and Ellis already mentioned, Martha Downer Ellis, wife of Manager George Ellis, found subject for her historical inquiries and poems in her published books:

On The Ranch

Caught in a dream are we who live here -
Bound by a magic that no man knows.
All the bitter winds of winter,
All the burning winds of June,
Lie clean forgot
When we ride forth on a fair and sunny day.