Michael Pettit, author of a book about the legendary JAL Ranch, will speak on “Historic and Contemporary Ranching in New Mexico” at 2 pm, Sunday, Sept. 26, in the History Museum Auditorium. After the event, visitors can enjoy coffee and fruit-and-piñon cobbler, with ingredients generously provided by New Mexico farmers and the state Department of Agriculture.
The event is free with museum admission; Sundays are free to New Mexico residents.
Pettit is a great-grandson of the Cowden family ranchers who founded the JAL Ranch in the late 1800s. Its legacy was detailed in his book Riding for the Brand: 150 Years of Cowden Ranching (University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), which won a New Mexico Book Award for Best Southwest History.
The Cowden Cafe at the History Museum is named for Pettit’s family and carries archival photographs of the JAL Ranch.
From 1883 to 1915, the JAL Ranch (for which the southeastern town of Jal is named) was the open-range home to 40,000 head of cattle and a part of New Mexico history that included the likes of Oliver Loving, Charles Goodnight, skirmishes with Comanches, and tales of gutting out the pioneer life in dugouts and covered wagons. At its peak, the JAL occupied much of what is now Lea County, east and south into Texas.
“These were family ranchers; they weren’t lonely cowboys,” Pettit said. “Theirs is the story of generations of ranching, where the women and the children were critical to its success. Much of the Cowden success was due to the fact that these were family ranches, not corporate ranches.”
Statehood played a role in the JAL’s eventual dissolution. After 1912, new laws imposed a requirement that ranchers purchase the land they were using. After 60 years of open-range ranching, Pettit said, his forebears couldn’t cotton to that notion, and in 1915, the JAL was no more.
The ranching, however, continued, helped along by forays family members made in the oil industry in the 1930s. Even today, members of Pettit’s family ranch in the Santa Rosa area, carrying on a fifth generation of the family tradition.
“A lot of the photographs I’ve taken on the ranch look the same as the historical ranching,” Pettit said. “A lot of things have changed, but certain practices and principles remain the same.”
Growing up, Pettit spent summers on the ranch, sometimes lending his culinary “expertise” as the ranch cook. If visitors to the lecture are lucky, he just might share the tale of offering trail-weary New Mexico cowboys his occasionally puzzling fare. (Gumbo, anyone?)
A high-resolution photo of Pettit and an archival image of the JAL Ranch can be downloaded at http://media.museumofnewmexico.org/mediabank.php?mode=events&action=files&instID=19&eventID=810.
