Red River Valley Co.

The Red River Valley Company, formerly the Bell Ranch, was a three quarters-of-a-million-acre ranch lying along the Canadian River in northeastern New Mexico. Bell Ranch was originally two Mexican land grants, the Baca Location No. 2 and the vast Pablo Montoya Grant of 1824. After the war with Mexico in 1846-1847, the Pablo Montoya heirs applied for confirmation of their grant. John S. Watts who led the confirmation process took a large part of the grant as his legal fee; he later acquired the adjoining Baca Location No. 2. Watts later sold a major part of this huge property to Wilson Waddingham. Waddingham invested in gold and silver mines in the West as well as land grants in the Southwest. In 1898, E.G. Stoddard, president of the New Haven Bank, founded the Red River Valley Company to buy the Bell Ranch. From then until 1946, this company, headed first by Stoddard and after 1923, by Julius G. Day, survived the ups and downs of the cattle markets of the 1920's and 1930's. Building on former ranch manager, Arthur J. Tisdall's new awareness of modern ranching practice, Bell managers Charles M. O'Donel (1898-1933) and Albert K. Mitchell (1933-1947) saw land and grasses as resources that must be kept in balance with the size and distribution of the herd. In 1947, the Bell Ranch was broken up and sold.