History

The area is rich in history. Philmont was the site of the first pioneer settlements in northeastern New Mexico. In 1841 Charles Beaubien, a French Canadian, and his partner Guadalupe Miranda, a Mexican citizen, were granted the deed to more than one million acres of Northern Mexico by the government of Mexico. In 1842 famous mountain man and US Army Scout Lucien Maxwell married Luz Beaubien, daughter of Guadalupe and led the first settlers to the grant in 1848. By 1857 Maxwell had either inherited or purchased the entire Beaubien-Miranda Land Grant, by then part of New Mexico in the growing United States. The native people, Jicarilla Apache, Ute and Comanche, were soon joined by Mexicans moving north and Americans moving west looking to trade in Santa Fe and to mine for gold. Maxwell and his partner, Kit Carson, facilitated the trade and mining operations by founding the historic Sante Fe Trail settlements of Rayado and Cimarron.

In 1870, Maxwell sold his ranch to an English land company known as the Maxwell Land Grant and Railway Company, whose attempts to remove squatters led a bloody struggle which came to be called the Colefax County War. The land grant was subsequently acquired by Dutch interests and eventually was sold in tracts for farms and ranches.

In the early 1920s oil man Waite Phillips purchased 350,000 acres of the famous land grant, including Rayado and the homes of Lucien Maxwell and Kit Carson. He closed the Magic Mountains to commercial operations and developed the now world-famous Philmont Ranch. Between 1938 and 1941 he donated one third of the property, including the Maxwell and Carson National Historic Sites, to the Boy Scouts of America. In 1963 another generous donation of land from Norton Clapp, vice-president of the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America, added over 10,000 acres of land to the Scout Ranch. Currently, the size of the ranch is 137,493 acres. As one passes under the ranch gateway a sign reads these properties are:

"Dedicated to the purpose of perpetuating Faith, Self-reliance, Integrity, and the Freedom Principles used to build this great country so that these Scouts, by the inspiration of nature, will diligently maintain the high ideals of the pioneer and the pathway to our destiny......... Waite Phillips, December 31, 1941