Beneath the Window: Early Ranch Life in the Big Bend Country

Before it became a national park, the Big Bend was home to a number of ranches and mining operations. On the Wilson ranch, which stood at the center of the current park, Patricia Wilson Clothier spent her youth exploring the wonders of ranch life in the Chisos. Patricia´s richly detailed memories, coupled with a backdrop of Depression era hardships, bring the Big Bend to life in this original and vivid description of a childhood spent Beneath the Window.

Big Bend has been a National Park since the mid 1940´s. Thus it is preserved for visitors to enjoy, however almost all signs of earlier ranches and homes have disappeared. It is difficult today to imagine crops growing, peach trees bearing fruit and fenced pastures and shearing sheds. The Wilson ranch alone had some 40 miles of fence with careful attention paid to preserving water sources and using them carefully. Being a stone´s throw from the Rio Grande made Mexico and its people close and friendly neighbors to the American community in Big Bend. If you ever have a chance to visit Big Bend National Park, this memoir is a must."

Patricia Wilson Clothier spent the first fourteen years of her life (through 1944)on the Wilson Ranch in Big Bend, Texas. In these years she experienced the Big Bend as her own backyard. After formation of Big Bend National Park, she and her family lived in Alpine, Texas, and then moved to Del Rio, Texas, where she graduated from high school.Patricia, an artist and teacher, now lives in Shawnee Mission, Kansas. She and her husband, Grant, built and operated a camp for disadvantaged children in the Missouri Ozarks.