The Wild Cow Corral with its trap gate came from the Block Ranch in Capitan, New Mexico. The old corral demonstrates how cattle were gathered in the high country, unlike the way cowboys performed the task on flat land. In the mountains, ranch hands devised a way to catch the cattle by building wooden corrals among the trees–often using the trees themselves–and putting feed inside the gates. Wild cattle nudged the gates to get to the feed. When the gate closed, the animals could not push it open from within. Cowboys, or “brush poppers,” gathered the cattle and used burros and horses to drag the cows down the mountain to the ranch’s pens for branding. The Wild Cow Corral was donated to the NRHC by Hap Canning, owner of the Block Ranch, and dedicated Oct. 29, 2004.
