Desert Horses

Welcome to my horse blog, Desert Horses. We live in the desert southwest, near Palm Springs, CA, but board our horses up in our local mountains where it is cooler in the summer. I have 4 horses, all rescues. Here is the ranch up the mountains where the horses stay.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Want a saddle??? Joshua Tree Ranch











There's a deserted horse ranch outside the west entrance to Joshua Tree National Park and since we went in and out of that entrance on Saturday, I had an opportunity to stop and look around. Yup. Want a couple of saddles? Of course, you would have to climb to the top of the posts to get them! The gate to the ranch is locked and there are no horses there and there was no activity...another sad sign of our current economy. Apparently this was once a thriving ranch. I found their website and they did boarding and gave lessons and took people into the park on horseback. Now it sits empty. It's near the little blue house ("Rattlesnake Ranch") and I'll be posting more photos of that later this week.

4 comments:

Linda said...

It would be cool if you could find some old photos in archives of when it was an operating ranch and compare that to your new ones. What a great old place!

lisa said...

That is so sad to see! I hate to see our ranches and farms going under!

Mikey said...

That's so sad! If I wasn't so happy where I'm at, I'd like to live there.

Laughing Orca Ranch said...

Looks so much like a horse riding place in Cerillos, NM that I am making plans to take a guided ride very soon. They have Tennessee Walkers and Missouri Foxtrotters...two breeds I've never ridden.
Ironically, their front gate looks similar to that Joshua Tree Ranch, with old saddles, dusty boots and rusty old bits and bridles hanging from the dry wood.

But their name reflects the decor even better than the Joshua Tree Ranch does.....

Their name is The Broken Saddle.

You can check 'em out with a Google search. Pretty awesome place with an excellent reputation. They probably stay in business better than that Joshua Tree place because they are just down the road from Santa Fe, and not far from Albuquerque.

~Lisa