Founded and expanded by private donations, the ranch today covers 10,600 acres. Facilities include a chapel, clinic, schools, fine arts and auditorium, visitors center, and 23 homes for children. More than 400 boys and girls help operate the ranch, attend school and vocational classes, and enjoy a year-round program of athletics. A popular annual event is the Boys Ranch Rodeo , Labor Day weekend, featuring competition among youths of all ages. Although some 80 percent of the young people were heading for trouble before coming to the ranch, most remain and graduate from the fully accredited Boys Ranch High School, entering the adult world as useful, self-reliant citizens.
Visitors are welcome at the ranch.
The boys maintain the cemetery today. Artifacts from Indian and prehistoric Panhandle cultures, cowboy and pioneer items, photos and docunents about Boys Ranch history. Open daily year round, 10a.m.-5p.m. Pioneer settlers in the early 1870's built adobe huts and irrigation ditches along area creeks. But as with many Texas cow towns, decline set in when the open range was girded with fences, and the railroad bypassed the site.