In a community best known for the world's oldest Dr Pepper bottling plant and the last one to use pure cane sugar, the Lightning C Ranch is a faded memory. During the Forties and Fifties, the Texas-based company produced rodeos in New York City's Madison Square Garden, the Boston Gardens, and even the Houston Rodeo.

Wind, you may spend half your time thanking the good Lord for it and the other half of your time cussing it. Without the Windmill, it is a question of if the West ever would have been won. Water is the one thing that needed to be harnessed in order for the people, stock and crops to survive.

Working on a ranch gives a person an opportunity to wear more then one hat. You most likely wake up thinking about the immediate needs of the stock your running and while your doing the normal chores, your brain is running a hundred miles an hour on what you family needs are. If they are not awake and running beside you, they will be when you hit the house.

Last Tuesday evening, I had a wonderful opportunity to meet a great American Cowboy family. They live and ranch up in the Tonto Basin near Roosevelt Lake in Arizona. I was up there just needing to get away from the city (it was Arizona Bike Week and I had been shooting Motorcycle events) and was shooting pictures of the desert with Four Peaks in the background.

“If a rancher doesn’t have a near-death experience about every two years, he’s doing something wrong.”
Uncle Robert

Story by Roger Edison

As spring rapidly approaches, the end of hibernation comes upon us as many animal species begin to be seen throughout the nation. South Texas is no exception as Dalton Edison, from Helotes, Texas comes across this seven foot plus size Blue Indigo Snake at the ranch near Cotulla while working over the first weekend of March .