Rising Circle Ranch is a genuine working ranch on 2,600 acres of high desert in the Galisteo Basin, run with as much care for the land as for the guests.
Chip Conley and his partners bought the ranch with a two-part vision: to create a world-class small-group retreat center where people come for growth, clarity, and connection, and to regenerate the land itself. Both come from the belief that the best gathering places give back both to people and the land.
Before becoming the retreat center and working ranch it is today, the property was a private ranch. The original estates were built in the 1990s, and architect Suby Bowden designed the home that is now Chip Conley’s private residence, Wisdom Well. It earned the American Institute of Architects Honor Award and the Jeff Harnar Award for Contemporary Architecture, along with tours from New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney.
The estates that became our Juniper and Cottonwood retreat centers are built in traditional Pueblo Revival style, so award-winning modern design and rustic adobe both have their place.
The ranch’s big-sky landscape made it an ideal filming location for Johnny Depp’s The Lone Ranger and the series Longmire.
Time named our retreat center one of the World’s 100 Greatest Places in 2024. Come walk it for yourself and discover why.
Most cattle operations take from the land. This one is being built to give back to it.
We have a team of experienced cowboys and land stewards dedicated to raising cattle the way the high desert can actually sustain – grazing that fertilizes the soil and builds it back, rather than stripping it bare.
The ranch recently welcomed its first herd of 80 cattle, and we move them carefully across the property so the land is nourished and no single stretch is ever overgrazed.
The long-term plan is to raise our own Wagyu beef here, sustainably, and to serve it at our own tables, from the ranch to your plate.
The ranch spreads across four square miles of high desert, laced with 13 trails that wind through the arroyos and up onto the ridgelines. Set out on foot for a morning hike, or take one of our ebikes – free for guests to use – and cover more ground, from the cottonwoods along the low washes to the long views up top.
However you explore it, the land is yours: open range, big sky, and the kind of stillness that’s hard to find anywhere else.
The ranch is home to two retreat centers designed with Chip Conley’s keen eye for beauty and comfort, each with its own rooms, dining, and gathering spaces – plus the Ranch Center and Chip Conley’s private residence, Wisdom Well, both available for receptions and events. The aesthetic is warm and grounded: raw wood, handwoven textiles, native landscaping, communal fire-circle seating, family-style dining, and gathering rooms set up for group conversation and connection.
The ranch keeps horses alongside the cattle, and a team of experienced cowboys and facilitators who can bring your group into ranch life for a day. Take a carriage ride behind our Percherons, ride out across the range on horseback, or spend a session in equine-assisted learning, where the horses have a way of showing you something about yourself. For groups who want the full experience, our cowboys will teach the real skills of the working ranch – throwing a lasso, moving cattle, working with the horses.
At the center of it all is the Ranch Center: ten stables, paddocks, and horses just outside the door, wrapped around a striking indoor-outdoor space. It’s one of the most memorable places on the property for a day or evening event – a Western cocktail party with the horses looking on, or a gathering under the open sky.
For all its seclusion, the ranch is easy to reach. Downtown Santa Fe – its galleries, plazas, restaurants, and one of the richest arts scenes in the country – is just 25 minutes away, and the nearby village of Galisteo has drawn painters, sculptors, and writers for generations. You get the quiet of the open desert without a hard journey to find it.
Photographs only tell part of the story. Walk the land, see the rooms, and feel what more than a thousand years of gathering has left here.