The earliest signs of settlement on C Bar Ranch date as far back as 5,000 B.C. by Native American cultures. These settlements are marked by rock home foundations and pictographs throughout the canyons on the ranch. Many of these archeological sites have been identified as Mimbres and Apache remnants. Evidence suggests they occupied this land until at least the 14th Century. The first white settlement on C Bar Ranch was around the mid 1880’s when the headquarters home was built. Further down the canyon many homestead foundations and a school, dating around the 1900’s, have been found and it is believed that area was occupied until around 1947

It is known a gentlemen named Mr. Speed was in ownership of the ranch in 1894 but it is unknown how he came into possession of the C Bar or at what point the ownership passed to the Cureton family. Mr. Speed had the longhorn steer (pictured) painted on the boulder above the headquarter home. While most of the paint has washed away, if you hike up to it, the steer can still be seen faintly today. Ned and Della Cureton at some point became the owners of the C Bar Ranch, inherited from Ned’s parents. Della was just 18 when she came to live at C Bar and died at 98 years old, outliving 3 husbands.

After Della, the ranch did not remain in the possession of an owner for more than a few years. From Della, the ranch passed to The Boys School sometime in the mid 90’s, who then sold it to a Texas lawyer a few years later, who then sold it to a rancher from Arizona, named Jerry Collings, who then sold it to our family, though he was sad to part with it. No one lived in the headquarter home after Della as it passed from person to person. Since Della, we have been the longest occupants of C Bar Ranch and our children are the first to be raised here.