Keys Desert Queen Ranch

Keys' Desert Queen Ranch is a desert homestead complex southwest of Twentynine Palms, within Joshua Tree National Monument. It includes a two-story frame ranch house, a school house, a guest house, a tack house made from two cyanide tanks, an arrastra, an ore-loading hopper, a windmill, a cemetery, several dams and a large collection of mining and farm machinery. Bill McHaney began the ranch about 1894 with three adobe buildings, and only a fragment of his adobe barn survives. William F. Keys settled in the area after 1910, took over the ranch and built most of the wood-frame buildings from salvaged materials. He ran cattle and livestock, grew fruit, mined, and built dams to capture rainwater. He expanded the homestead from 80 to 240 acres, raised seven children there and arranged teaching on site. The ranch was listed for what it shows of ranching and mining life in the high desert between 1894 and 1969.