The Wild Plum Ranch is a little piece of paradise located in the panhandle of Texas. Available for short-term rent, the Ranch is perfect for hosting company retreats, family reunions, or for a family to simply escape city life for a little while.
The story of the Wild Plum Ranch dates back to the late 1880’s, when my great-grandfather, Windham Robinson Harvey (“Uncle Bunk”, for whom I am named), born in Tennessee in 1863, came to the Texas Panhandle (around Childress) and started work as a cowboy. Unlike others who blew their pay at the saloon on Friday night, Bunk saved his money carefully. Around 1900 he bought his first two sections (one square mile each) in Hutchinson County. Over the next 25 years, he built the Harvey Ranch to some 53 sections, leaving Texas in 1925 for Long Beach, CA, to take care of his wife’s tuberculosis. Bunk had three daughters; my grandmother Bonnie was the second. My mother, born in Long Beach in 1923, spent all her summers on the Ranch and developed a love for it that she transmitted to me — and now to my three kids, all of whom have worked for several months on the Ranch as part of their gap years.
The original Harvey Ranch knew many ups and downs. It was in the middle of the Dust Bowl and survived only because oil was discovered on the eastern edge of the West Panhandle Field in 1936 (another ranch Bunk owned in northeastern New Mexico had to be sold in 1934 for that reason). The Harvey Ranch remains entirely in the family (some seven owners today); the Wild Plum Ranch is one of the five parcels into which it has been divided.
We hope that you will come and enjoy the scenery and solitude that brings us back often. There are many places on the Ranch where you can look 360 degrees and nothing has changed since Bunk rode it. We love the beautiful sunsets, the starry skies, the abundant wild life, and a peace and quiet that you will find in few other places. We think you’ll leave relaxed and refreshed —knowing a corner of America far off the beaten path that waits to be discovered.
