Meet This Year's Staff at Zapata Ranch
Meet and get to know a few faces from the 2022 cohort as they get underway with yet another guest season at the ranch.
The Ranchlands Review
- All
- Art
- Beefmaster
- Beginnings
- Birding
- Bison
- Books
- Branding
- Chico Basin Ranch
- Conservation
- Conversations
- Expertise
- Food
- FP Ranch
- Horses
- In Conversation
- Land Management
- Land Stewardship
- Made by Hand
- Mercantile
- Migration
- MP Ranch
- Music
- Natural History
- Paint Rock Canyon Ranch
- Passage
- Place
- Playlist
- Ranching
- Recipe
- Scale
- Symbiosis
- Time
- Transition
- Travel
- Video
- Women
- Women in Ranching
- Zapata Ranch
Re-Membered
Against the backdrop of valley, mountains, and dunes, Amanda Knopf Rauhauser makes sense of her grandmother’s passing following a battle with dementia.
What Zapata Means to Me
Some ranch days I might spend observing big bustling cattle brandings or the intimate happenstance of a wrangler working her project pony, sneaking in a quick and blissful bareback ride.
In Pursuit of Radical Joy
Time stopped, we say, in moments of great joy or sorrow, but don’t we really mean that a moment of time imprinted itself on us, left its mark on us...
Zapata's Orchestra
In southern Colorado, there are two canyons in the Sangre De Cristo mountains where the wind pushes sand beneath them in such an intense and persistent manner that great dunes...
What Edie Ure Learns from Plants
In pursuit of color. How a high fashion career in London became the catalyst for foraging wild plants in Colorado.
Healthy Earth 80 Years in the Making
António Garcia has been farming successfully for over seven decades. His guiding principle? Topsoil. Meet one of the local farmers whose produce supplies the Zapata Ranch kitchen.
Planting Seeds: The Beginnings of the Zapata Ranch Garden
Meet Abby, a member of a seventh-generation Colorado agricultural family who has planted our first Zapata garden.
Birds of the San Luis Valley: When and Where to See Them
Visit the striking San Luis Valley. This Colorado locale has a suite of ecosystems and landscapes, making it a standout birding location.
Perspectives from the Saddle: Meet our 2021 Zapata Wranglers
Every year a group of life-long riders joins our staff at Zapata Ranch as wranglers. Here are a few stories from their first month.
The History of Zapata Ranch
Archaeological investigations have documented that the San Luis Valley was utilized by various Native American cultures for thousands of years. The earliest time period, the Paleo-Indian stage (approximately 11,500 B.P....
A Timeless Pursuit
A lone hunter weaves his way through the sagebrush islands pockmarking the sand of the San Luis Valley. He left at daybreak, just as he has on countless autumn mornings...
Our 16 All-Time Favorite Bison Works Photos
Bison Works, which takes place annually at the Medano-Zapata Ranch, is a photographer’s dream. Running bison kicking up clouds of dust, early fall light, and the chance to get up...
From Locals, for Locals
For six years, Nick Chambers, aka Chef Funghi, has managed Valley Roots Food Hub, a distributor of locally grown produce located in Mosca, Colorado. Besides supplying truly local produce to...
From Open Range to Zapatas Table
Feeding hungry guests after a long day of ranch work is no small task, but Chase Kelley is no stranger […]
How the Dunes Were Formed
Thousands of years ago, a large plate in the Earth’s surface shifted. This rift created the San Luis Valley in Colorado, a valley roughly the size of Connecticut. As the...
Ethical Eating at the Zapata Lodge
The dining room at the Zapata Lodge is a place to learn about how to eat intentionally, responsibly, and ethically.
Elk Encounters
Wildlife biologist Wes Larson, also known as Griz Kid for his frequent work with bears, spent some time at the Zapata tracking down and photographing a few of the ranch’s...
The Bison and the Rancher
How ranchers and the bison they manage might save each other from extinction.
