About the Bolack Museum Foundation

About the Bolack Museum Foundation

The Bolack Museum Foundation preserves the collections and legacy of Tom Bolack and his son Tommy, two men who spent their lifetimes assembling extraordinary things and sharing them with the public.

The Foundation

Continuing a Family Legacy

The Bolack Museum Foundation operates two museums on the B Square Ranch in Farmington, New Mexico. The ranch, its wildlife collection, and its vast assemblage of technological artifacts are the result of decades of work by father and son, each driven by very different passions but united by a common impulse: to collect, preserve, and share.

Tom Bolack built the B Square Ranch from a single 160-acre purchase into a 12,500+ acre property that today includes a wildlife museum of international caliber, a working cattle ranch, a private game refuge, and conservation land protected in perpetuity. His son Tommy, working on the south side of the river, filled multiple buildings with one of the most eclectic collections of American technological history ever assembled.

The Foundation ensures that both legacies remain open to the public for generations to come.

Tom Bolack: The Man Who Built The B Square Ranch

Tom Bolack was born in Winfield, Kansas. He did not graduate from high school, but the people who knew him describe a man of extraordinary intelligence, charisma, and appetite for risk.

Tom grew up during the Depression, in a generation that understood self-sufficiency as a matter of survival. He learned farming and ranching in Kansas, then followed the oil industry to New Mexico, arriving in the late 1940s with little more than a used car. He drilled wells in McKinley County near Gallup before turning his attention to the San Juan Basin, where he saw potential that others had overlooked.

In what became one of his most-told stories, Tom approached a banker for a loan. When asked what he had for collateral, he leaned forward and replied, “My two hands.” The banker, impressed by his character, gave him the money. That moment became the title of his biography, “Two Fists Full,” and it set the tone for everything that followed.

Tom educated himself on the geology of the San Juan Basin, acquired federal oil and gas leases, and began selling and trading with major companies, including El Paso Natural Gas. The wells paid off. With money in his pocket, Tom turned his attention to the things he cared about most: land, conservation, agriculture, and the community around him.

He established the B Square Ranch as a multi-use property, running cattle, growing crops, and experimenting with agricultural techniques suited to the semi-arid climate of northwest New Mexico. One of his most lasting contributions was the development of the Navajo Willow, a tree bred from Chinese willow stock that provided shade while using very little water. Tom donated tens of thousands of these trees to families on the Navajo Reservation, now Navajo Nation, and throughout the region.

His experimental farm produced such exceptional results that when he entered competitions at the New Mexico State Fair, he won nearly everything. After a year or two, he realized he was discouraging other competitors, so he withdrew and instead offered to match all prize money out of his own pocket.

Tom also threw himself into public life. He entered politics in the early 1950s and was elected mayor of the City of Farmington, served as state legislator, and then served as Lieutenant Governor of New Mexico. During his political career, he was instrumental in securing water rights, helped facilitate the construction of Navajo Dam and its access road, played a role in building Farmington’s sewer system during the oil boom that grew the city from 3,500 to 25,000 residents, and helped bring television to the area. Farmington’s cable system, established in 1957, was among the first in the world.

Those who knew Tom say he was magnetic. People were drawn to him. He constantly hosted gatherings, welcomed strangers to see his collections, and treated everyone he met with genuine warmth. He also set up the B Square Ranch as a game refuge, initially manager by New Mexico Game and Fish, though he later took the operation back to properly care for the wildlife and fish.

One of his closest associates summed it up simply: his epitaph should have read, “He had one heck of a lot of fun.”

Alice Bolack

Alice met Tom in Kansas, where she worked as a telephone operator. She was small, petite, and by all accounts a beautiful woman. Where Tom was the extrovert who welcomed the world onto his property, Alice was private and reserved.

She raised the family largely on her own while Tom traveled for business, politics, and hunting expeditions. She lived in the family’s town home at 1010 North Dustin in Farmington while Tom spent most of his time at the ranch. She was the steady center of the family.

Alice passed away from breast cancer at a relatively young age.

Today, an abandoned railroad bridge that Tom and Tommy hauled approximately ten miles across the countryside sits across the river on the B Square Ranch. They named it the Alice Bolack Bridge. It connects Tom’s north side of the property to Tommy’s south side, and in the eyes of those who know the family, it represents far more than a crossing.

Tommy Bolack: The Quiet Collector

Tommy Bolack grew up in the Farmington public school system and was hard to miss. When asked about his height, he liked to say he was “five feet twenty inches” tall. But where his father filled every room he entered with energy and conversation, Tommy was quiet, introspective, and content to work alone.

He graduated from high school in 1969 and earned his electronic technology degree from New Mexico State University in 1973, where he also earned an FCC third-class radio license and worked as a DJ at the university’s FM station. Radio became one of his great joys. Later in life, he hosted two Sunday shows from a studio he built in his home on the ranch: a pop music program in the morning and a country classics show in the afternoon. Listeners tuned in from as far away as Alaska, and Tommy was known for giving historical and factual information on the artists and songs he played.

After college, Tommy returned to the B Square Ranch and put his engineering training to work, designing the electrical irrigation systems that transformed the south side of the property into productive farmland. He also served as a consultant to the City of Aztec, helping redesign their municipal electrical system. Outside of work, he volunteered as a reserve deputy for the San Juan County Sheriff’s Department, a role he took seriously and held for years.

But collecting defined his life. His first collection was a shoebox full of glass insulators, gathered on a family trip to Kansas when he was 5-6 years old. That shoebox was the beginning of what would become one of the world’s largest insulator collections and a museum complex of collections encompassing 3.5 acres.

Tommy also authored a book on the San Juan agate, a local rock he spent years studying and collecting from riverbeds in Colorado. Among rock collectors in the Four Corners, he was considered a leading authority on the subject.

He built a 10,000-square-foot home on the ranch with an exterior of petrified wood, sealed with a distinctive blue mortar known as “B Square Blue.” The house is currently being prepared as additional museum space.

Those who worked alongside Tommy for decades describe him as one of the most intelligent people they ever met, someone who could focus on a subject with remarkable intensity and depth. He was generous with the people he trusted, loyal to his community in ways most people never knew about, and deeply devoted to the memory of his mother.

Tommy passed away at the age of 73. His collections remain exactly as he intended: open for people to see.

The Land

B Square Ranch: 12,000 Acres of Protected Land

The B Square Ranch encompasses over 12,000 acres along the San Juan River, including approximately 5 miles of river frontage, seven man-made lakes, and 1,500 acres of natural bosque habitat. The Ranch operates as a private game refuge, supporting populations of deer, turkey, eagles, river otters, numerous species of fish, and tens of thousands of wintering waterfowl.

The Ranch is permanently protected through conservation easements held by the New Mexico Land Conservancy, so that the land will not be subdivided or commercially developed.

Tom Bolack’s original vision for the property was multi-use land: a working ranch that could support cattle, crops, wildlife, energy and oil production, and public education simultaneously. That vision remains intact today, and the foundation continues to manage the property in the spirit of both men who shaped it.

That vision remains intact today due to Tommy Bolack’s continued support of his father’s aspirations until he, too, passed away. The Foundation now continues to manage the property in the spirit of both men who shaped it.

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