Tassi Ranch, Tassi Springs, Littlefield, Mohave County, AZ

Significance: Tassi Ranch sits on the western edge of the Arizona Strip, an isolated desert region in northern Arizona bounded by the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River to the south and east and the Utah and Nevada borders to the north and west. Endowed with multiple natural springs that provide fresh water year-round, the site was probably a waypoint for Native American travelers in the region for hundreds of years before American settlers, explorers, and ranchers are documented to have begun stopping there in the mid-nineteenth century. By the mid-1930s, a few decades of informal use by a succession of sheep and cattle ranchers culminated in the construction by rancher Ed Yates of reservoirs, irrigation ditches, and a house and outbuildings clustered around the springs. These vernacular structures and water features transformed the site into a habitable ranch core whose features largely survive today. Habitation at the site continued through the 1980s, and grazing on its land lasted through the late 1990s. A National Park Service cultural landscapes inventory completed in 2003 determined the site to be locally significant for its association with the development of cattle ranching in the Arizona Strip. It also found the ranch's structures and man-made landscape improvements significant as rare survivors of their type. Tassi Ranch illuminates the ways independent ranchers and homesteaders modified the natural landscape of the desert southwest to create sites for agriculture and settlement in a harsh and remote environment.
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N28
Survey number: HALS AZ-2
Building/structure dates: ca. 1936- ca. 1940 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: ca. 1917- ca. 1936 Initial Construction