La Tinaja, a Guest Ranch, where our goal is to provide the finest in western hospitality, includes services such as Big Game hunting, family reunions, western weddings and corporate retreats. La Tinaja Ranch is located in western New Mexico on Highway 53 near the small community fo El Morro.

Gia Bartlett invites you to visit La Tinaja Ranch. I am the owner and operator of a working cattle ranch here in Cibola county, New Mexico. I have twenty plus head of miniture horses here that roam wild.

Buttons and Snowman are my prize stud horses. Patches, Pockets and Pino were recently born. They are the smallest and cutest you will ever see. Call me and I will make my entire ranch available for your family vaction.

Summer vacation at La Tinaja Ranch is a great get-away for the family. Our wildlife preserve, canyons, forest and ghost town are all wonderful to hike and explore. There are many attractions near the ranch including El Morro Inscription Rock, Ramah Lake, the ice caves, wolf sanctuary and Zuni pueblo.

There are also three restaurants close by as well as a luxury tea house. Our rental cabin features a cozy, king size bed with all meals included. CONTACT ME, Gia, at 505-240-1382, to plan a family union as well.

Enjoy authentic ranch-style accommodations, including delicious meals, king size bed, and sleep like a baby. Leave the cooking to us while you hunt, recreate, ride horseback, hike, watch or fly hot air balloons (seasonal) or simply bask in the peaceful surroundings of the Cibola county and forest.

The property adjoins a combination of public and rural private lands, including the extensive lands of Cibola National Forest to the east, state lands to the west, and Indian lands to the south. Less than approximately two acres of the property are affected by improvements, which include a hunting cabin and small appurtenant structures, stone ruins and cemetery of the old Tinaja town site.

La Tinaja Ranch manages the property as a wildlife habitat for light recreational use, such as hunting and wildlife watching. Light seasonal livestock grazing also occasionally occur on the property.

Historic uses of the property included homesteading activities, hunting, trapping and livestock grazing. The old Tinada town site, originally called San Lorenzo, of which only a few ruins of sandstone buildings remain on the property, was established in the 1860s by Santa Fe ranchers, Pablo Candelaria and Jose Maria Marez, along an old wagon train route at the site of several springs. Tinaja, a Spanish word for "earthen vat," became a stopping place for travelers and pioneers. It had a central plaza and a dance pavilion. Several families settled there during the late 1800s, grew fields of corn, beans and chiles, and ran sheep and cattle on the surrounding lands.

Eventually the land surrounding Tinaja was acquired or controlled by the livestock and timber baron Silvestre Mirabal, at one time the biggest landowner in New Mexico. During the early to mid-1900s, Mirabal and others logged the Zuni Mountains and severely overgrazed the lands surrounding El Morro and Tinaja. The mountains are now reforested but the effects of historic overgrazing are still apparent in the vegetative composition of the rangelands in the region. Tinaja was deserted by 1940 and only a few stone ruins and a small cemetery remain on the property.