Today...Monday Feb 22, saw us take a tour of the McVey Ranch, through the owners tour company, Red Rock Ranch Tours. The owner is Darice McVey and was an excellant guide. The claim to fame for this spread, is the amount of Pre-Cambrian rock formations. Pre-Cambrian is the time before fossils. This area was, at that time, the floor of sea. The stone is really compressed sandstone, which gives it the unusual shapes as errosion takes place. Here that errosion is wind. The area was also part of the nomadic Indian tribes migration route and "grind holes" are found in quite a few places on the ranch. The first picture shows the outcroping of the Pre-Cambrian rock, the second is of a grind hole ( with a quarter in the bottom to show the size of the hole), and the third photo shows how the outcrops rise from the ranch floor.
This ranch (remember this is Texas) is 27 sections. Each section is 1 square mile or 640 acres. Therefore it is 17,280 acres covering 27 square miles in size. The land is so arrid in this part of Texas (SouthWest) that it requires 100 acres for each cow and calf. This ranch does not raise cattle. It has been used for several movie shoots and commercials. This is our last night in Van Horn, tomorrow we are booked in a campground in El Paso for at least two nights. We may walk across the border to Juarez Mexico for some "bargins".