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Story by Tom Wright / For The Free Press
Photos by Rob Shields / For The Free Press
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Left:A stubborn calf is thrown to the ground for branding. Right: Peggy McKinley keeps watch (background) as a calf takes off after being branded. |
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At age 5, Peggy Pack had her second serious bout with pneumonia and whooping cough. When her parents came to realize the seriousness of her condition, they set out in search of a new place to live. So they headed west.
Her doctor had suggested she spend a couple of years in a dry climate so the Packs began their move from Princeton, N.J., to “a place where a half-remembered flat-top mountain stood sentinel over a grassy basin rimmed with shear sandstone cliffs of pink, purple and gold.” (From We Called it Ghost Ranch, Pack) Peggy’s father, Arthur Pack, was the editor and publisher of Nature Magazine and had roamed much of the Southwest in search of photographs and good stories of wild life and adventure. This remembrance called him to return.
In the late spring of 1933, Pack and his wife Eleanor, “Brownie” as she was called, set out from the little Penitente village of Abiquiu, where they picked up a guide who took them up a poorly graded road through the Chama Canyon to the spectacular cliffs Arthur had remembered. The guide told them the place was known as “Rancho de los Brujos,” because local folklore said it was haunted by witches. They called it Ghost Ranch.
The Packs settled into their original home on Ghost Ranch they called the “Burro House.” After finishing a new home situated in the present grouping of buildings, they sold the Burro House to Georgia O’Keeffe, who lived there until she bought another property in Abiquiu.
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Left: Henry McKinley takes a pensive look at all the activity. |
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Peggy’s father wanted to establish a dude ranch and settle into a lifestyle of entertaining many of the sophisticated and wellestablished names he knew from the East.
But her mother was a woman of adventure and after five years, “Brownie” divorced Arthur and married a big game hunter and adventurer named Frank Hibben.
Peggy’s mother took her and her sister Norrie to live in Albuquerque and they began another life of world travel, returning to Ghost Ranch only to visit their father for short periods.
Also living on the ranch was a top hand named Jack McKinley, who wrangled and ran much of the working ranch operation. Jack was married to Margaret and had a son, Henry, who was a couple of years younger than Peggy and her occasional playmate until her move to Albuquerque. Jack and Margaret also divorced and Henry moved with his mother to Mountainair.
In 1940, Margaret McKinley took a job back on Ghost Ranch and Henry later returned to find a place in the ranch operation as a teenager. All along, Henry had admired his father, who fast became one of the leading names in New Mexico ranching. Jack, who had now married an heiress of Johnson and Johnson, bought the Diamond K ranch, which ran from Lamy Hill to the Galisteo River and late sold the place to Bluford Thornton and the ranch took on the modern name of Thornton Ranch. Also in Jack’s holdings was the Dead Horse Ranch at Villanueva. It would be safe to say Henry had ranching in his blood and he would take to it well.
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Friends Steve Price and Dale Brookshire help Henry and Peg at their roundup. |
After some years of absence from Ghost Ranch, Peggy fell in love with Tom Bathi and became engaged to marry. On one visit to Ghost Ranch with her new fiancé, Arthur Pack, being a man of action, suggested they go ahead and have the marriage ceremony that weekend and get on with life. Not being prepared, Tom borrowed a suit from the strikingly tall cowboy, Henry McKinley.
After moving to Tucson, 23 years of wonderful marriage and three children, Peggy lost Tom to an untimely death. Having grown children, she soon returned to Albuquerque to live near her mom and sister, Norrie.
Meanwhile, Henry went off to school at New Mexico Military Institute where he excelled in polo and later to New Mexico State where he graduated with a degree in range management.
After finishing college, Henry did his hitch in the U.S. Army, serving in Korea and Hawaii making news on two occasions in the “Stars and Stripes” where his roping ability was featured. One picture showed him roping the 90mm cannon on the tank he drove.
Though well trained in military ways by his time in ROTC, Henry resisted the pressure to attend Officer Candidate School, choosing to conclude his tour of duty in two years instead of the required three for officers. He wanted to get back to ranch life which he did after separating from the service.
His occupation took him to the Bureau of Land Management where he served as a range conservationist, riding most of the BLM lands with a horse and pack animal. After hiring on with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, he continued riding his horse as a range manager for the Indian lands of the eight northern pueblos.
While working for BLM and BIA, Henry also supplemented the family income shoeing horses professionally and managing part of the Mundy Ranch in the Brazos for Bill Mundy and the Cerro Pelón Ranch for Phillip McKee.
Just to be sure he went to bed tired, Henry also pursued his lifetime passion of roping, traveling to surrounding states and winning about every calf and steer roping contest he entered, including the New Mexico Quarter Horse Championship in 1965.
Henry and his first wife had two sons and their marriage ended in divorce. One son was deaf and as a result, Henry learned to sign and remains active within the deaf community, even after the tragic loss of that son.
All agree he has a great love for people. If you are “green and citified” and want to learn about cattle, go talk to Henry. He is glad to take the time to teach, but suffers no fools in the pens or pasture.
If you do go to the pasture with him, you had better be ready to ride. Encouraged by his sister, Henry asked Peg out and they were married in Albuquerque on Feb.18, 1979, and settled on the La Bajada Ranch while building their present home at Lone Butte. While Peg has been and remains an avid traveler, she also had developed a love for the ranch life she returned to with Henry.
With Henry, she has ridden many of the old haunts of her youth as well as the ranches where they raised cattle. From La Bajada to their Las Vegas ranch to the thirty-section Rancho Viejo, Peg has covered every inch, worked every roundup on horseback, branded, shipped and cooked the meal for the neighbors who helped.
At 80 years, she decided she had cooked for her last roundup and Henry agreed a caterer was a good idea. However, that hasn’t stopped her. Today, she is the pen manager, counting the calves, arranging the trucks for shipping, contacting the sale barn for space and keeping the ranch books.
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Calves and their mothers are herded to the calving area at Henry and Peg McKinley’s ranch, where people gathered to help with branding. |
At the last branding, she was wearing the 1965 first place buckle Henry had won at the NMQHA Championship. Peg is truly a devoted woman to the man she married and the life they have together. When asked once what she saw in Henry, she answered, “He is a wonderful man, a wonderful husband, a wonderful horseman and a wonderful rancher. What more could I want?”
Beyond ranching, Peg and Henry uphold the ways and traditions of the old west. There hospitality is abundant and their love for a gathering with neighbors is high on their list.
Peg and Henry are really kindred souls with a zest for life and friends. Theirs is a romance full of life and substance.
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