Walter Miller, the youngest of the four Miller brothers, welcomed more than 400 of the family's closest friends to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the C.E. Miller ranch.

Tables in the backyard of the C.E. Miller Ranch accommodated 400 guests.

The Rio Grande is about 10 miles west of the C.E. Miller ranch across the rugged Sierra Vieja.

The U.S. Army's Camp Holland was built in 1918 to guard against border bandits and the potential incursion of Pancho Villa. Ruins of about 20 buildings remain on the C.E. Miller Ranch.

A marker on the C.E. Miller Ranch is a reminder that the area was frontier territory deep into the 19th century.

The Valentine Texas Bar in tiny Valentine is about 20 miles east of ranch headquarters.

An urbane Houston friend of mine was “noodling” the other day about cowboys, ranches and politicians who feel the need to affirm their manliness by riding the range across their own spread. (It’s a Texas tradition going back at least as far as LBJ.)

“Where have all the cowboys gone?” he wondered over email, his noodling mind meandering like a Hereford heifer across West Texas rangeland. “They were supposed to be stoic, thick-skinned. Now we have a president triggered by an ad from Canada. Who gets upset at Canada?”

By pure coincidence, I had an answer to the first question, the one about cowboys. Two days after my friend’s email, wife Laura and I headed out Highway 90 to the C.E. Miller Ranch. The ranch is 650 miles due west of Houston, beyond Marfa (and “Giant”) and about 20 miles southwest of tiny Valentine. It’s also about 10 miles east of the Rio Grande, all of which means we were in some of the most isolated country Texas has to offer. At the foot of a low-elevation range called the Sierra Vieja jutting up from the Chihuahuan Desert, it’s some of the most rugged terrain in the state. The four Miller brothers and their extended families were celebrating the ranch’s 100th anniversary with dinner for 400 of their closest friends. Long tables set up in the tree-shaded yard beside the adobe-brick ranch house accommodated the crowd.

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“We’re one of the last family ranches,” Walter Miller, one of the brothers, told me. The brothers are the fourth generation of Millers in the area; their adult children are the........

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