The one-million-acre L. C. ranch completely overshadowed other ranches in southwestern New Mexico. At its peak, 60,000 cattle grazed mountains and grasslands stretching to Arizona, and the operation employed 75 cowboys and 100 families to ranch and farm the land from the 1880s until 1917. Englishman Tom Lyons and Scottish prospector Angus Campbell created an empire that became one of the truly great ranches of the West. Lyons built a lavish home in Gila and a mountain hunting lodge accessible only by wagon trail two days up river. After Lyons’s murder in 1917, the landholdings were sold, but his home, the ranch headquarters, and the Catholic church he built for his family and employees still stand in Gila.