After Vermejo Park went through several owners in the late-19th century, William H. Bartlett (1850–1918) of Chicago, Illinois bought 205,000 acres (83,000 ha) from the Maxwell Land Grant Company in 1902.

Under the agreement, he withheld part of the last payment until the Maxwell Land Grant Company evicted the last of the Hispanic "squatters" who had lived for many years along the Vermejo River.

A syndicate of New York, St. Louis, and Chicago businessmen took an option to buy the ranch and organized the Vermejo Park Club, selling memberships to Tex Austin, Billy Mitchell, Amon Carter, and the Frederick Guest family.

A member of the Guest family shot an elk which at the time was the ninth largest in the world; it is now on display at the Museum of Natural History in New York.

[4] In 1927 Chandler and his investors opened a new Vermejo Park Club attracting Will Rogers, Cecil B. DeMille, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Harvey Firestone and Herbert Hoover.

[8] Vermejo has large hydrocarbon resources estimated to consist of a 300-year reserve of bituminous coal, trillions of cubic feet of natural gas and unknown quantities of oil.

These miners consisted primarily of local Hispanic workers and many recent immigrants to the United States, especially from Italy and Greece.

[12] Although touting the coalbed methane production at Vermejo, as environmentally friendly, El Paso Natural Gas ran into public opposition when it attempted to exploit natural gas resources in the neighboring publicly owned area of Valle Vidal.

[12] Vermejo, just west of the city of Raton, is the biggest component of Turner's ranch empire of 2,000,000 acres (810,000 ha) that consistently keeps him in the top ten of private landowners in the United States.

An eight-mile long, north-south ridge with four summits above 12,750 feet (3,890 m) including Big Costilla Peak form the western boundary.

A small portion in the western part of the ranch, the East Fork of Costilla Creek, drains into the Rio Grande.

[19] Vermejo also has an agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service to help conserve the Rio Grande cutthroat trout in the small headwater streams in which it lives.

[20] Vermejo is also cooperating with Philmont Scout Ranch in restoring Ponil and Bonito Creeks to conditions in which they can support trout populations[21] Vermejo is improving the quality of its ponderosa pine forest by selective cutting and controlled burning and encouraging the expansion of declining quaking aspen forests.

[22] Research on various factors influencing the wildlife on the property and reclamation of land impacted by abandoned coal mines are on-going projects.

The Cimarron Solar Facility on 364 acres (147 ha) produces 30 megawatts of electric power, sufficient for 9,000 homes.