Bed & Breakfast

The road leading in to Faraway Ranch

This would be the view out their front door

These folks were way ahead of their time by turning their cattle ranch into a Guest Ranch. Man if I would have been around at the time I would have loved to live here.

Faraway Ranch is the pioneer homestead and later cattle and guest ranch of Swedish immigrants Neil and Emma Erickson and their children located in Chiricahua National Monument. The Erickson family lived on the ranch for 91 years before its purchase by the National Park Service in 1979.

The Faraway House fireplace was constructed from stones used in a monument to honor President James Garfield. The names on the stone were hand-carved by buffalo soldiers, the African American troops of the Tenth Cavalry, stationed here in 1885-1886. The exhibit building contains displays about the Erickson family and stories of ranch life. The house is completely furnished with original family items and is open for scheduled tours.

Even though the homestead was technically owned by Emma Peterson from Neil Erickson's death in 1937 until her own death in 1950, actual control of the ranch operations was in the hands of her daughter, Lillian, and, later, her son-in-law Ed Riggs (of the aforementioned sawmill family) from the 1920s. In 1923 Lillian married her neighbor and childhood friend, Ed Murray Riggs. Ed had experience in ranching and automobile maintenance, and he had learned aerial photography in the Army Air Corps. (His photographic expertise was important in bringing the strange rock formations of the monument to the attention of a wider audience.) Ed threw himself enthusiastically into the guest ranch business, adding bathrooms and plumbing to the ranch house, creating the "guest dining room" from the north porch, and building a swimming pool.

something I found outside one of the barns