Oliver Milton Lee 1865-1941
photo courtesy WSNM

The Oliver Lee Dog Canyon Ranch at Oliver Lee State Park south of Alamogordo represents the life and times of a prominent rancher and politician who overcame the adversarial conditions of developing a ranch in the "open range" of territorial period New Mexico. Oliver Milton Lee, born to a ranching family in Buffalo Gap, Texas, came to New Mexico in 1884 as a teenager. Lee and his half-brother, Perry Altman, came from Little Elm Creek, Texas, in search of open rangeland and a good market for horses. Within a few years he had developed a reputation for fearlessness and straight shooting. By 1893, he had settled on the mouth of Dog Canyon as the best location for his ranch. Building an extensive house, possibly with the assistance of Francois-Jean (Frenchy) Rochas, a French immigrant who homesteaded at the mouth of Dog Canyon, Oliver Lee used the location to develop one of the most extensive ranching empires in southern New Mexico.
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