Williams Ranch

This intricately designed ranch house was home to Henry and Rena Belcher and their daughter Bernice in the early 1900s.

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Williams Ranch Details

This intricately designed ranch house was home to Henry and Rena Belcher and their daughter Bernice in the early 1900s. The Belchers stayed there for around a decade, maintaining a sizeable ranching operation with around 3,000 cattle. During the decade that the Belchers lived there-- and largely due to the overgrazing of their cattle-- the landscape changed dramatically. Rainfall had begun to decrease, exacerbating the problem of depleted grass coverage and causing local populations of bighorn sheep, elk, bison and wolf to leave or go extinct. Bear and mountain lion continued in the area (as they do today) but their numbers decreased drastically. In 1917, a Louisiana cowboy named James Williams bought the property and began to raise Longhorn, then sheep and goats. He also farmed a small portion of the land. Williams, who gave the ranch its modern name, owned the property until 1941, when he sold it to Judge J.C. Hunter. Hunter's son ultimately sold the property to the National Parks Service in 1966. Today, visitors can still explore the Williams Ranch by hiking the El Capitan Trail or by renting gate keys from the park visitor center and driving on a four-wheel drive road a short ways south of the main park entrance on Highway 180/62.

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