CAA members visit scenic location where Lonesome Dove was filmed.

CAA members ride across Hat Creek Ranch in Montana.
CAA members ride across Hat Creek Ranch in New Mexico.

Campfires, cowboy teepees and cowboy artists highlighted a week at the Hat Creek Ranch in northern New Mexico. The Cowboy Artists of America meet every year for strategic planning and to build on the camaraderie amongst its members.

Rather than meeting in a stuffy hotel conference room, they gather on a ranch, camp out and take meals from a chuck wagon. The artists also make sure to schedule saddle time, whether moving cattle, branding or riding through scenic landscapes.

This year they met at John and Charlotte Kimberlin’s historic ranch. The Hat Creek Ranch is where the latter part of Lonesome Dove was filmed, when Captain Woodrow F. Call and his men arrive in Montana with their cattle. The Emmy Award-winning miniseries, released in 1989, starred Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones.

The Kimberlins have preserved the mountain meadow and lake as it was seen in the film, and they recently refurbished the cabin and corrals that Captain Call’s men build during the latter scenes of Lonesome Dove.

cabin Lonesome Dove
The Kimberlins refurbished the cabin and corrals that appeared in the movie Lonesome Dove.

The cowboy artists set up their teepees above the cabin and meadow, conducted meetings in a nearby tent, and spent one day riding through mountain meadows and stands of pine and aspen trees. CAA President R.S. Riddick says the annual rides also serve as inspiration for the artists.

“The world doesn’t need just another pretty picture,” he says. “It needs a poet, a preacher, a word of truth to shake people up about the way things really are. And by getting out here, where you smell it, see it, feel it, it becomes real in your work as an artist. It’s not just something you’re making up. You’re living it. And then people who buy our art can get a piece of something that is genuine.”

Cowboy artist Wayne Baize drove from Fort Davis, Texas, for the ride.
Cowboy artist Wayne Baize drove from Fort Davis, Texas, for the ride.
Teal Blake leads his mustang through the meadow where part of Lonesome Dove was filmed.
Teal Blake leads his mustang through the meadow where part of Lonesome Dove was filmed.
CAA horses graze at sunrise near camp.
CAA horses graze at sunrise near camp.
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1 Comment

  1. Billy Parham Reply

    I visited the location myself in 2019, by car, so much better on horseback of course. Thanks for the beautiful pictures. Nice as they are, nothing compares to being there in person. And when you love Lonesome Dove (and who in their right mind doesn’t) it’s magical and quiet emotional to stand in the spot where Captain Call and the boys finally reached their ‘Montana’ destination after all the hardship they endured on the long drive up from Texas. Special thanks to John and Charlotte Kimberlin for preserving it some 30 years later. Now if only Captain Augustus McCrae had lived long enough to see it…

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