Edward R. Tinsley III (1952-2022) took the reins of the Flying W Diamond Ranch operation in 1986, and each day forward made it his life’s work. Born and raised in Lamesa, Texas, Ed worked alongside his father as they built the Tinsley’s ranching legacy in New Mexico and West Texas.
Ed attended the University of Texas and then later Texas Tech law school. He married the love of his life, Meredith George Tinsley, whom he first met on a Sierra Blanca ski lift, just 30 miles up the road from the Ranch.
After practicing law in the late 1970’s, Ed’s entrepreneurial drive overtook his lawyering. He and Meredith set off for New Mexico to become the first Schlotzsky’s franchisees. And so began a career in the restaurant industry that would eventually take Ed to one of his proudest professional accomplishments as the Chairman of the National Restaurant Association.
No place was closer to Ed's heart however, than the Flying W Diamond Ranch. No matter where his pursuits took him, he always considered it home. Raising cattle was his passion. So much so that in 1992 he bought the now 60-year-old restaurant brand, K-BOB'S Steakhouse, so that he could, as he put it, work from "the pasture, to the plate".
In the last years of his life, the K-BOB'S Steakhouse in Ruidoso, New Mexico was where Ed put all his best culinary ideas into action. He not only introduced 44 Farms genetics at the Ranch, but also began serving 44 Farms beef at the restaurant, which in turn became Flying W Diamond beef — a one of kind offering for the honest pricing K-BOB’S Steakhouse is known for.
The capstone to Ed's ranching legacy in New Mexico was his development of a Registered Black Angus program that lives on today. He preached to his children, Ede and Edward, how important and unique it was to safeguard this way of life. He knew that in being a careful custodian of the land and its animals, that his children and grandchildren would have a legacy they could be proud of long after he left this world.
Living Life Unbridled.
a storied past
This land carries more than our family's history. Capitan is famously the hometown of Smokey Bear, and our own Ranch was briefly host to the legendary bear himself. After he was found in the burned out forest of the Capitan Mountains in May of 1950, he was taken back to what is now the Flying W Diamond Hunting Lodge. He was bandaged there and recovered overnight before he was taken to a veterinary hospital to fully recover. He then flew on to Washington, D.C. to meet President Eisenhower….and the rest is history.
The Ranch also holds a piece of Old West lore — Billy the Kid is said to have hidden out here with his eventual jailor, Lincoln County Deputy Sheriff James Bell. To this day, there are old homesteads still standing across the entire Ranch, including Deputy Sheriff Bell’s, who met his fate at the end of his own gun - the trigger pulled by William H. Bonney’s himself as escaped the Lincoln County Courthouse jail just 15 miles up the road from the Ranch.
The story of Lincoln County couldn’t be written without reference to the once grand Ruidoso Downs racetrack. For decades, the Downs hosted the richest quarter horse race in the world - the All American Futurity. Ed Tinsley, III raced horses at the track and notched his most famous win in the 1992 Rio Grande Futurity with Bold Arrival. More important to that, it played host to countless family memories across many generations, a truly unique place for us all to develop core memories.
