About the Museum:
Slaughter Ranch Museum National Historic Landmark, the old adobe ranch house has been restored along with several outbuildings. Visitors can tour the icehouse, wash house, granary, commissary, and a car shed to understand about life in southern Arizona at the turn of the 20th century were all meticulously restored in the 1980s and carefully maintained and preserved since.
In 1887, John Slaughter purchased the ranch acquired his 65,000acres of land. An earthquake in 1887 destroyed many of the buildings on the property. Slaughter's Ranch is a synonym for San Bernardino Ranch, which was originally established in Mexico and covered thousands of acres. The new US-Mexico border of the Gadsden Purchase sliced through the ranch. It is still called San Bernardino today, but is affectionately known as Slaughter's Ranch almost 100 years after John Slaughter's death. After his second term as sheriff ended, Slaughter moved to the ranch permanently and the present house was built in 1893.The ranch is now a living museum of ranch life in the early Arizona Territory.
