Jack Lapham strolled all 542 acres of the ranch, breathing in the desert air deeply and squinting at the shrub-speckled hills. On the horizon of this empty Western wilderness, he saw fences for horse stables, hotel suites, shooting ranges, and aircraft runways. The ranch’s owner stood behind him as he surveyed the land. “What do you think?” the owner asked, his voice firm and husky, like gravel. Jack, a former military colonel, turned and smiled a soldier’s wry smile. With a twinkle in his eye, he pulled out his checkbook. “This looks like a place where modern people can go and find themselves in the midst of yesterday.”

Over its next 65+ years as a dude ranch, the Flying L was the setting for aircraft tests, visits from famous authors, and the TV show The Cisco Kid. Today, staffers maintain its desert landscape and historic stone villas—many designed by associates of Frank Lloyd Wright—as a Western family resort. Suites lodge visitors among fireplaces and king-size beds, and modern and traditional decor styles meet inside tile bathrooms and wood-cabin construction. An 18-hole golf course rambles between massive oak trees, and miniature-golf fairways encounter obstacles such as rocky outcroppings and wagon wheels. An authentic ranch stable houses 40 horses, which can carry riders around the fields or on trots along grassy trails and rocky riverside paths. Nearby, a water park battles the desert heat and incites the hurt feelings of mirages with an artificial wave pool, tubing river, and water slides.