Welcome to the Ranch
On the Roaring Rapids Ranch the sun drifts slowly over our pastures, the river runs clear and cold from the ice covered mountains to quench someone's thirst, and a loyal dog's worth can't be measured in gold. These are the tales of Jake Harmon, Foreman of the Roaring Rapids Ranch, and Boone, his faithful friend, who once found him and never left his side. You will meet new cowboys as they begin working on the ranch, as well as farmers, shopkeepers, dressmakers, bankers, sheriffs, and perhaps a few rustlers. They all have their stories to tell in and around the town of Caldwell Crossing.
This ranch is more than a patch of land. The inspiring stories of people finding a new start or getting another chance make us feel as though we would like to live, work, and become friends with everyone at the Roaring Rapids Ranch. From the crackle of the campfire to the call of the whippoorwill, every sunset and sunrise brings a new chapter in the lives of those who ride, work, and dream beneath these Western skies. Come along and learn how Jake and Boone met and how Boone proves himself to be a real cowdog.
New artwork illustrates each chapter. Audios accompany each chapter so you can listen as you read along with the story or just listen. On the Roaring Rapids Ranch, as you read and listen to our stories, you will make new friends and learn life lessons that can make life better. You will find cowboys talking by a campfire or saving a man and his mule from the Roaring Rapids River. You can join Jake and Mary at a barn dance and watch what happens when Colt, the Range Boss, meets the trouble that walks in. We built this ranch with an easy-to-follow structure, but dressed in ranch colors and the Western dust of the 1880s. Each story stands alone. Read whatever interests you.
To Educate and Entertain
Roaring Rapids School is designed with young readers and English-language learners in mind, offering the full family-friendly chapter text with matching audio so readers can follow along at their own pace and even pause the audio. If you would like to improve or practice your English reading, speaking, and writing, you will find free self-study lessons based on each story in our Roaring Rapids School, which is growing weekly in new resources. If you are an ESL or TEFL tutor, you will also find free online and classroom TEFL teaching lessons based on each story prepared with a certified TEFL tutor at the Roaring Rapids School. Since our ranch stories are written considering English-language learners of all ages, Cole reads each chapter to give an example of the standard pronunciation of English words.
We have taken every effort to assure our stories truly represent the time, place, and characters of ranch and town life in the 1880s in the West. If you see an error, please let us know. We hope to give our readers an appreciation for the early West, to learn what people found valuable, and to see what many people faced, both delightful and difficult times. Our characters often use abbreviated words that you would hear when talking to cowboys, ranchers, and tradesmen in the 1880s West, so we explain these words and usages in our school lessons and indicate when they are now obsolete or unused by most of those whom you may be teaching. If as a tutor you would prefer not to use some of these abbreviated or obsolete words, you can easily print out the stories and change these words for your use.
Our life on the Roaring Rapids Ranch is always full of surprises, Mary just said that she is writing a Roaring Rapids Ranch Cookbook with recipes from the 1880s, and all the cowboys love her cooking.