Daniels Ranch

Daniels Ranch is a historic farmstead and picnic area on the Rio Grande, about a mile west of Rio Grande Village campground. Its adobe house is the last structure left from the ranch, and the old irrigation ditches are still visible across the farm complex. It is a quiet, shady stop with a useful slice of Big Bend’s farming history; the park also identifies it as a birding spot.

Farming along this stretch of the Rio Grande predates the house. Hispanic residents practiced subsistence farming on the floodplain before Swedish immigrant John O. Wedin bought the land in 1918. Wedin built the adobe house for equipment storage and installed an eight-inch pump irrigation system. The farm supplied wheat, alfalfa, hay, and other crops to nearby mining communities.

John Daniels acquired the upper farm in 1937. He and Mary made the house their home, expanded it to two rooms, and ran a small store there. They cultivated cotton on about half of the 200-acre farm; the family left when the park was established in 1944.

The house is about 44 by 15 feet, a compact building beside the river. Look for the old irrigation ditches crossing the farm complex; they show how much work went into watering fields here. For a photo, frame the adobe walls with the trees and rocky ridge behind them to give the low house a sense of scale and setting.