Welcome back, El Sultan - Circle Z Ranch

 

As we mark our 100th year as Arizona’s oldest dude ranch, and indeed amongst the oldest in the country, paying tribute to such a legacy has taken us to many endearing memories. The thousands of guests who have graced our doorsteps, leaving their lasting impressions in our adobe structures, and have formed us into who we are as a home away from home. And the staff, years and years of dedication and hard work, never forgetting that “season” where they were living and working in the arid desert of Arizona. Yet it is the horse that was the reason for our beginnings, and what carries us into the next 100 years. And so this Fall, we paid tribute to the greatest of them all, El Sultan, the stallion who arrived on our doorsteps in 1935, leaving his lasting impressions until his passing in 1952.

To pay tribute to El Sultan, we collaborated with dear friend and artist Russell Bowers. Here is what he wrote in tribute to his work  that will greet guests at our entrance for the next 100 years.

“What a wonderful occasion for all of you, to be at a beautiful place to recognize the historic life of a figure from a wonderful age of Arizona’s history. Southern Arizona was a place of pulsing energy, with mining discoveries and incredible amounts of mineral wealth, of railroad construction, ranching and occasional robberies, yet still twenty years before the last Apache raid into Mexico. It was a golden age, and the discovery of Arizona beauty by Eastern families, mixed with the mystique a lost desert world, its harsh beauty in this western nirvana was captivating. Rich with memory of gunslingers and rustlers, and just over the hills to the east the smoke still clearing from the OK Corral shootout…and beneath it all? The rhythmic motion? The force that moved life and history? It wasn’t the statuesque figure coming through the dust behind a herd of cattle – whether stolen or not. It was the horse he rode on. Horses were still the mainstay of activity in the region – and the historic area that you are presently enjoying was the beginning of a burgeoning attraction that focused that history into reliving the past and roaring into the future.

It is fitting and proper to unveil this piece, a portrait of that horse – more than just a regular mount of the time but a majestic example of the Carthusian breed was brought to augment the history of the border area. It is appropriate that this is a monument to a monumental horse – the magnificent El Sultan – a horse who made a prize-winning and historic impact on the breed stock of the area, and stormed the pages of the local newspapers.  This bronze stallion is a humble attempt to display the incredible conformation of this specimen, and the foals and fillies he threw followed him in their impressive air and beauty.

Well, it’s a great day to appreciate Arizona, the Circle Z, the legacy of decades of enjoyment, and now El Sultan. Thank you Diana, thank you to all the staff hat make our experience so memorable, and thank you for those who brought this Horse back to Patagonia. El Sultan – is back!!”