Back at the Ranch · History

History

Back at the Ranch is a Santa Fe boot store founded in 1990 by Wendy Lane Henry. The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that she grew up in Florida (a 2024 profile says Miami), dreamed as a child of living out West, and worked as a fashion designer in New York before moving to Santa Fe. The first store opened on Don Gaspar Avenue with a focus on vintage Western fashion, used cowboy wear, and boots; it moved to Marcy Street in 2000. Henry began selling online in 2008.

The New Mexican’s 2015 profile says Henry opened her El Paso factory in 2007 to make handmade, custom-designed boots. New Mexico Magazine wrote in 2024 that the company had worked exclusively with its own El Paso facility for more than two decades, which would place the start earlier; the two accounts don’t agree on the year. Press accounts name Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Tom Ford, Ralph Lauren, Post Malone, and Jane Fonda among the store’s customers. Henry’s granddaughter, Jackie Hopper Daru, joined the business and is being groomed to lead it.

Despite Henry’s middle name, Back at the Ranch has no connection to Lane Boots, the Arlington, Texas, boot brand.

The boots

The boots are made by hand in El Paso by three generations of one family of artisans, at a factory Henry owns. In 2024 she told the New Mexican the shop turns out only about nine to fourteen pairs a week: “My boots are not factory-made. It’s not production.” Henry says she does about 90 percent of the designing herself. Leathers come mostly from the United States, with some exotic skins from South Africa, and the store has offered hides such as python, alligator, and hippo.

The store carries upward of 600 to 700 styles, and custom orders start around $1,500 with a wait of several months. Product listings print “Made in Texas.”