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Ranches
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Kingman, AZ
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11 min
The last windmill on the ranch road
A fourth-generation rancher, a pump that still turns, and very little rain.
Mile
842
The windmill still turns. It pumps water into a steel tank for cattle that wander in at dusk, the same way it has for ninety years.
Four generations
The family has run cattle on this land since the 1930s. The house has been rebuilt twice. The windmill has never stopped, apart from one bad winter when the gearbox froze.
We spent the afternoon fixing fence and talking about rain, which is what everyone here talks about. There has not been enough of it for a long time.
You don't own land out here. You look after it for a while.
Visiting
Many ranches on this road are private. Ask before you open a gate, and close every gate you open.
Words and route by Wren Hollis
Joshua Tree, CA
8 min
The trees that keep time
Joshua trees grow about an inch a year. We sat with them until dark.
Amboy, CA
4 min
A sky with nothing in the way
No towns, no moon, and the Milky Way all the way down to the creosote.
Marble Canyon, AZ
5 min
Where the Colorado turns
Above a river that took six million years to cut its way here.
The Sunday Dispatch
Get the next stop on Sunday
One letter a week. Free, and easy to leave.