Tassi Ranch: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Grand Canyon - Parashant National Monument, National Park Service

Provencher, Shaun; Warner, Len

The Tassi Ranch is a rural historic district whose buildings, structures, and other landscape features comprise a unique and intact ranch core on the Arizona Strip dating from the first half of the twentieth century. The ranch core consists of approximately 200 acres of Mojave Desert creosote bush ranchland in Grand Canyon‑Parashant National Monument (also referred to as Parashant National Monument). Located on the edge of the Grand Wash in the western portion of the Arizona Strip, which encompasses the lands north of the Grand Canyon and south of the state of Utah, the surrounding desert topography is rough with steep canyons rising hundreds of feet to flat tablelands above. Immediately to the east are the Grand Wash Cliffs which rise in a series of steps over 1500 feet to the Shivwits Plateau. While outlying ranch features exist, the majority of the ranch developments are clustered around Tassi Springs, a system consisting of numerous spring heads, at the center of the property. Here, buildings, corrals, agricultural fields, irrigation ditches, a row of large cottonwood trees, and other vernacular ranch features remain intact from the first half of the twentieth century. These features compose a shady oasis in the extreme desert environment of the Arizona Strip. The period of significance for the site extends from 1936 to 1947, and encompasses the years Ed Yates, a local rancher, occupied the land and constructed most of the developments at the springs. The extant features at Tassi Ranch represent a unique complex whose elements display local adaptations to the needs of living and running a ranch in the desert environment of Northern Arizona. The Tassi Ranch rural historic district retains integrity as a rural vernacular landscape and is in fair condition. The qualities that determine integrity according to the National Register of Historic Places: location, design, materials, workmanship, setting, feeling, and association are primarily intact through the retention of the following landscape characteristics that contribute to the significance of the ranch: natural systems and features, spatial organization, topography, circulation, vegetation, buildings and structures, and small scale features. One landscape characteristic, land use, no longer contributes to the site’s significance due to the cessation of ranching at Tassi.

Tassi Ranch: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Grand Canyon - Parashant National Monument, National Park Service

Series

Collections