Lipscomb County Ranches
Source: The Handbook of Texas Online
S BAR T RANCH
BOX T RANCH
CONNELL AND EUBANK RANCHES
SEVEN K RANCH
CRESSWELL RANCH
SPRINGER RANCH
S BAR T RANCH
The S Bar T Ranch, located on Mammoth Creek in north central
Lipscomb County, had a relatively brief existence. Its
significance lies in the fact that it was a by-product of the
Oklahoma land runs. On April 22, 1889, settlers throughout the
West, particularly those in Kansas and along the Texas border,
took advantage of the formal opening of the Indian Territory.
As the "boomers" moved out of Lipscomb County, ranchers reasserted their control. One partnership that availed itself of land left vacant by departing nesters was that of Porter and North of Denver, Colorado, who used the S Bar T brand. For fifteen years this firm leased choice grassland along Mammoth Creek and its tributaries to fatten cattle shipped into the county from other places.
When ready, the cattle were driven to Higgins, shipped to northern markets, and replaced by more cattle-a method similar to that used by modern feedlots. Hiram Black and Henry Hazelwood managed the S Bar T range and employed T. H. Black as a wrangler. By 1904 the range was being resettled with immigrant land-seekers. The S Bar T ceased to run cattle, and George McClure ended its operation.
The headquarters became the nucleus of
the Peugh Ranch in 1907-08 and later was purchased by William A.
Wilson, who also bought five sections of land adjoining it.
Wilson ran the ranch until 1928, when his daughter and
son-in-law, John A. Gex, assumed its management.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: A History of Lipscomb County, Texas, 1876-1976
(Lipscomb, Texas: Lipscomb County Historical Survey Committee,
1976). Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's Country: Fifty
Frontier Ranches in the Texas Panhandle, 1876-1887 (Amarillo:
Paramount, 1981).
H. Allen Anderson
BOX T RANCH
The operation that later evolved into the Box T Ranch began in
1879 when James Monroe Day arrived from Austin and began grazing
cattle on Camp Creek, a tributary of Wolf Creek in southeastern
Lipscomb County. His brother Tony had a homestead on Wolf Creek
near Fort Supply, Oklahoma, and a brother-in-law, Alexander
Young, started the YL Ranch in Beaver County, Oklahoma.
In the 1880 census the Day brothers
were listed as large operators in Lipscomb County, with
livestock
valued at $100,000, including 10,000 cattle and 100 horses.
Their
hired cowhands were paid a total of $6,000 that year. In
addition
to the Wolf Creek range, the Days also owned grazing land in the
disputed Greer County, Oklahoma. Cattle on both of these ranges
carried their DAY brand.
In the summer of 1882 the Days sold their Wolf Creek holdings,
including 18,000 cattle, to the Dominion Cattle Company of
Canada
for $450,000. The new owners moved the headquarters to the
Cherokee Outlet in what is presently Ellis County, Oklahoma, and
began using the Box T brand and running cattle on range leased
from the Indians. That arrangement continued until 1885, when
President Grover Cleveland ordered all white ranchers out of
Indian Territory. A new headquarters was then constructed on
Camp
Creek, but until fences were erected grazing continued across
the
line into the territory.
The twin brothers John and Sam Douglas
were among the first to arrive and work for the Dominion
Company.
Lishe Stevens, Gaston Smith, James F. Bryson, and Frank Biggers
served successively as foremen. The Box T employees helped
sponsor the organization of Lipscomb County in 1886 and
attempted
to make their proposed townsite of Dominion, in the heart of
their range, county seat. That honor went instead to Lipscomb,
near the boundary of the neighboring Seven K Ranch. Higgins
became the Box T's railhead and supply center. By 1887 the
Dominion Company owned roughly 30,000 cattle and 400 horses.
In 1888, after settlers began coming into the area, the Dominion
Company sold the Box T to a man named Dameron, who hired Patrick
Doyle as range manager. Doyle purchased an interest in the ranch
the following year and brought his bride, Harriet, back from his
native Canada. By 1900 the Doyles had purchased the remainder of
the Box T; they continued to run it on a reduced scale. Their
most famous cowhand was George Sennitt, who became legendary for
his wild shenanigans. A favorite story with the Doyles' three
sons was that Sennitt once challenged Will Rogers, who was
working for Perry Ewing's Little Rob Ranch in Oklahoma, to a
horse race in Higgins. Bets were quickly made and exchanged
among
cowboys and townspeople; Rogers won the race by a head. Later,
Rogers immortalized Sennitt as the "Irish Lad" in his
newspaper columns and radio broadcasts.
After her husband's death, Harriet Doyle married John A. May,
who
managed the ranch until 1940, when he was killed in an accident
in Amarillo. Her sons, Frank and Robert Doyle, then took over
management of the Box T. In 1955 Vester L. Smith and Willis
Price
bought most of the ranch, and Smith became the manager. In 1986
the Doyle family still owned a share of the Box T, the only
pioneer ranch extant in Lipscomb County.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Gus L. Ford, ed., Texas Cattle Brands (Dallas:
Cockrell, 1936). Laura V. Hamner, Short Grass and Longhorns
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1943). A History of
Lipscomb County, Texas, 1876-1976 (Lipscomb, Texas: Lipscomb
County Historical Survey Committee, 1976).
H. Allen Anderson
CONNELL AND EUBANK RANCHES
The first ranch in Ochiltree County was established by Thomas
Connell and J. D. (Dee) Eubank, both of whom came from Burnet
County. In 1876 Connell and Eubank drove cattle from Winters, in
Runnels County, to seek a suitable ranch site. They initially
attempted the valley of the Purgatoire River in Colorado, but
two
successive hard winters there decimated their herds.
With about thirty cattle left, the two young cowmen headed south from Kansas. They camped at a small playa near the site of present-day Perryton on December 20, 1878. They decided Wolf Creek was the most promising location for their ranch, herded their longhorn cattle into the creek draw, and occupied the dugout recently vacated by their friends Alfred H. and D. Wilborn Barton,q who had moved into the abandoned Jones and Plummer stockade farther downstream (see JONES AND PLUMMER TRAIL).
Another neighbor was Charles A.
Dietrich, who helped them round up wild mustangs and often
cooked
for them. Within two years Connell and Eubank had increased
their
individual herds and established their own ranches, Eubank in
eastern Ochiltree County and Connell two miles to the east in
Lipscomb County.
Just before this separation, Dee's letters had prompted his
brother, Henry T. Eubank, to move his family to Wolf Creek from
McCulloch County, where he had served as county sheriff. In 1887
Henry Eubank registered a Triangle F brand. Two years later,
when
Ochiltree County was organized, he was elected a county
commissioner. From 1894 to 1900 he served as county judge. Dee
Eubank helped establish Ochiltree County's first school, known
locally as "Raw Hide College," across Wolf Creek from
his homestead. In later years the Eubank heirs leased the ranch
property and eventually sold it to Carl Freeman.
Tom Connell, who recorded a D brand in 1881, built a comfortable
ranchhouse with a stone fireplace on Wolf Creek in western
Lipscomb County. The county line was his property's western
boundary. In 1886 he erected a fence along a strip two miles
wide
and eight miles long and connected it with the old drift fence
(see PANHANDLE DRIFT FENCES) to the south. In 1885 Connell
married Jannie Watson at Mobeetie; they had two sons and two
daughters.
When Lipscomb County was organized in
1887, Connell was elected its first county judge. He also
established a mercantile and butcher shop in Lipscomb. Business
was conducted there in a way most unusual, even for the
frontier.
Connell would hang a fresh beef carcass in his shop, place a
pencil and tablet near the meat block, go away, and leave the
door unlocked. Each customer would cut off the portion of meat
he
wanted, weigh it on Connell's scales and write his name and the
amount of purchase on the pad. At his convenience the customer
looked up the judge and paid him. Connell ran this meat business
successfully for several years before selling it and moving in
1905 to Canadian, where he and his wife spent their remaining
years.
The Eubank and Connell ranches were never large like that of
their neighbor, Henry W. Cresswell. They have remained basically
intact, although under different brands and owners. The site of
Connell and Eubank's original dugout on Wolf Creek is now on the
Walter Daniel ranch.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Millie Jones Porter, Memory Cups of Panhandle
Pioneers (Clarendon, Texas: Clarendon Press, 1945). Pauline D.
and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in
the Texas Panhandle, 1876-1887 (Amarillo: Paramount, 1981).
H. Allen Anderson
SEVEN K RANCH
The Seven K, the first ranch in Lipscomb County, was established
in 1878 by George Anderson, who drove a herd in the spring of
that year from Colorado over the Jones and Plummer Trail, which
ran through the western part of the county. He found the terrain
on both sides of Wolf Creek to be ideal grazing land. He
established his headquarters on the south side of Wolf Creek,
started using the Seven K brand, and hired Frank Biggers as
range
foreman.
In 1884 Anderson sold the ranch to the Washita Land and Cattle Company, owned by the firm of York, Draper, and Parker. This company, based in St. Louis, operated under the AV brand in Indian Territory until President Grover Cleveland ordered all white ranchers out of the territory in 1885. Subsequently, the company merged the AV with the Seven K. York, a Dodge City merchant, became manager of the ranch, with R. K. McMordie as his assistant. Since York was an absentee owner, actual management of the Seven K fell to McMordie, who remained until 1898.
Seven K cowhands were paid an average salary of thirty-five dollars a month plus board. At first they drove cattle annually over the Jones and Plummer Trail to Dodge City but later shipped them by rail from Higgins to Kansas City. During the annual spring roundup the ranch usually branded between 3,000 and 4,000 calves. The Seven K encompassed 30,000 acres, and various accounts numbered the herd from 6,000 to 15,000 head. Frank Biggers was retained as a range boss by the Washita Company until the "Big Die-up" of January 1886, when a blizzard killed great numbers of trapped cattle. When Biggers asked to cut the Panhandle drift fence to let cattle retreat south from the northers rather than die, the management refused permission. Consequently Biggers quit the Seven K and took the job of range foreman for the neighboring Box T.
The Seven K helped sponsor the
organization of Lipscomb County in 1886 and was probably
instrumental in making Lipscomb the county seat. As more
settlers
came into the area, the Seven K reduced its holdings, and during
the Oklahoma land runs it leased much of its property for three
cents an acre. O. R. McMordie, R. K.'s nephew and later Hemphill
county judge, remarked that the "ranchmen only leased
watering places and used grass free of charge." By 1900 the
ranch had stopped business and sold its holdings to small
ranchers and farmers, unlike the Box T, which is still in
operation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Laura V. Hamner, Short Grass and Longhorns
(Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1943). Pauline D. and R. L.
Robertson, Cowman's Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in the Texas
Panhandle, 1876-1887 (Amarillo: Paramount, 1981).
H. Allen Anderson
CRESSWELL RANCH
The Cresswell (or Bar CC) Ranch was established in 1877
by the Cresswell Land and Cattle Company of Colorado. This
syndicate was formed when O. H. P. Baxter and the brothers J. A.
and M. D. Thatcher, owners of bank stocks, mines, and farms,
decided to back Henry W. Cresswell, who was enthusiastic about
building up a ranch in the Panhandle. Accordingly, Cresswell
drove a herd southward and selected as headquarters a site in
Ochiltree County on a small tributary of the Canadian known as
Home Ranch Creek.
He marked his cattle with the Bar CC
brand he had first registered in Colorado and cropped their left
ears. Another Colorado herd trailed to the area in 1878
increased
the Bar CC cattle to 27,000 head. Soon Cresswell expanded his
range and became a favorite personality among his neighbors,
including Robert Moody, Joseph Morgan, Dee Eubank, Tom Connell
(see CONNELL AND EUBANK RANCHES), and the Cator brothers (see
CATOR, JAMES HAMILTON). When Morgan died of smallpox in 1883,
Cresswell aided the family and bought the Morgan Triangle cattle
from the widow. Eventually the Bar CC range covered 1,250,000
acres that extended from the Canadian north to the state line.
The great Panhandle drift fence was erected across this range.
In order to move his headquarters to a more central location,
Cresswell bought from Alfred H. Barton the old picket stockade
and storehouse built by Charles Edward Jones and Joseph H.
Plummerq on Wolf Creek in eastern Ochiltree County. In 1882 the
Prairie Cattle Company offered to buy out Cresswell, whose herd
by then was estimated to be over 31,000 head. Although that deal
fell through, some of the Prairie stockholders succeeded in
joining the Bar CC operation in 1885. A new syndicate, composed
of these English investors along with the old cattle company,
was
formed and called the Cresswell Ranch and Cattle Company. It
bought the ranch for $1.5 million, and Cresswell retained
$20,000
interest.
This transfer took some time, and it proved a time of troubles.
The Cresswell Ranch was plagued in 1885-86 by a slump in the
market, the "Big Die-up" that winter, a prairie fire,
and wolves. Nevertheless, Cresswell doggedly overcame his
financial losses by purchasing 11,000 cattle from Charles
Goodnight and fattening them in Indian Territory. The new
company
retained Cresswell as head of the ranch, and he remained with
the
Bar CC until 1889. James McKenzie, a Scot from Kansas City, was
named general manager, and W. J. Todd, who had counted cattle in
the transfer, became superintendent.
Laura V. Todd recalled how she and her
infant son traveled by train to Dodge City from Trinidad, and
then for two days by horse-drawn buggy from Dodge to the ranch
headquarters, where she lived in a tent until a new frame house
was completed. Mrs. Todd brought potted plants and had furniture
shipped in by mule freight. She tells of an infestation of
bedbugs and the death of her baby in 1886. By Christmas she had
a
second son, Jep, and joined in efforts to give the cowboys a
real
celebration, complete with a dance, wild turkeys for the feast,
and a multitiered cake decorated with store-bought candles. Jack
Meade, Dave Pope, Archie King, Dave Lard, O. R. McMordie, and
Edward H. Brainard, who was later made range foreman, were among
the Bar CC cowhands who helped host that memorable Christmas
gathering.
In January 1894 the Barcee post office was established at the
ranch headquarters with Laura Todd as postmistress. Until then
mail had been left there for distribution to area settlers. The
office lasted only until May 1895, when mail was routed to
Ochiltree. By then the Cresswell company had more than 25,000
cattle, including purebred shorthorn and Hereford bulls, and 300
saddle horses. However, fluctuating cattle prices and pressures
of settlers caused the company to decline. Around 1900 it closed
its operations and divided the ranch. Snyder and Sears of Kansas
City bought the last of the original Bar CC herd. The brand,
made
with two irons, was used until 1937 by the ranch of Mrs. John
Jones and her son-in-law, F. C. McMordie, located on Home Ranch
Creek, the site of Cresswell's first headquarters.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Laura V. Hamner, Short Grass and Longhorns
(Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1943). Arthur Hecht, comp., Postal
History in the Texas Panhandle (Canyon, Texas: Panhandle-Plains
Historical Society, 1960). A History of Lipscomb County, Texas,
1876-1976 (Lipscomb, Texas: Lipscomb County Historical Survey
Committee, 1976). Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's
Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in the Texas Panhandle,
1876-1887
(Amarillo: Paramount, 1981). Wheatheart of the Plains: An Early
History of Ochiltree County (Perryton, Texas: Ochiltree County
Historical Survey Committee, 1969).
H. Allen Anderson
SPRINGER RANCH
The Springer Ranch was the first ranch in the Panhandle, but
because of its brief, checkered life, as opposed to the
still-extant JA Ranch, the latter also claims that honor. After
the Red River War, in the spring of 1875 A. G. (Jim) Springer
appropriated a spot of land in present Hemphill County on Boggy
Creek just north of its junction with the Canadian River. Here
he
constructed a multiroom dugout to serve as a general store,
hotel, and saloon, as well as living quarters. In addition, he
dug a tunnel from the all-purpose roadhouse to a nearby corral
and stable that he built out of pickets.
Since Springer's hostelry was on the
military route from Fort Supply to Fort Elliott, it quickly
became a supply depot and gathering place for transient buffalo
hunters, soldiers, and cowboys. Black troops stationed at Fort
Elliott, in particular, found it the only place in the Panhandle
where they were welcome to play cards and enjoy good whiskey and
tobacco. "Old Springer" soon won considerable notoriety
as a shrewd poker player. His roadhouse later became a regular
stagecoach stop, and in October 1878 a post office was
established there under the name of Boggy Station. However, it
was closed after only two months' operation, and mail was routed
to Fort Supply.
Springer's role as a frontier rancher began by chance. In 1875
an
outfit driving a herd of 2,000 cattle crossed the Canadian River
near the roadhouse rather than at the usual crossing on the
trail
some distance to the east. These cowmen sold Springer 300 head
and left a young trail hand, Tom Leadbetter, to help manage
them.
Springer, however, enlisted Leadbetter to wait on customers at
the store and bar, while the cattle, which bore their new
owner's
hastily burned AGS brand, freely roamed the nearby range with
little attention from anyone.
In 1877 the two men began constructing
a "real house" from carefully selected cottonwood
pickets, with a thatch and dirt roof. One added feature was a
blockhouse loopholed on all sides to accommodate gun barrels in
case of an Indian attack. On November 17, 1878, Springer and
Leadbetter were killed in a gunfight with disgruntled buffalo
soldiers over a poker game. They were buried at the ranch. A
subsequent army investigation at Mobeetie resulted in the
troopers' acquittal.
The ranch entered a new phase after Jim Springer's brother sold
the business to men named Tuttle and Chapman from Dodge City.
Before long Tuttle bought out Chapman's interest, married in
Mobeetie, and personally operated the Springer Ranch for the
next
two years. He adopted a CT brand, perhaps after his initials,
and
increased the herd to 1,800 head. Tuttle also blazed a more
direct route than the Jones and Plummer Trail north to Dodge
City, where he periodically sold cattle and bought supplies. The
Tuttle Trail was subsequently used by other area ranchers.
During
Tuttle's brief tenure, the post office was reestablished in
September 1879 under the name Springer Ranch; it remained in
operation until February 1885.
In 1881 Tuttle sold out to a Denver horse ranch partnership, the Rhodes and Aldridge Company. Rhodes was the son of a wealthy manufacturer in Aston Mills, near Philadelphia, and Reginald Aldridge was English. They changed the brand to Quarter Circle U and operated the ranch as absentee owners, although Aldridge did spend his summers there. It was from his experiences here that he wrote a lively range-cattle guidebook, Ranch Notes (1884). Rhodes and Aldridge reorganized their Texas holdings as the Springer Ranch Company. As manager they hired Mose Wesley Hays, an experienced cowman who, with his brother-in-law Joseph Morgan, had driven cattle to Hemphill County from Padre Island in 1878.
His wife, Lou Turner Hays, became
legendary among area cowboys for her hospitality. Around 1889
the
Springer Ranch Company sold out all its holdings piecemeal. The
former roadhouse was abandoned, and the ranch gradually ceased
to
exist. The Hays family settled on Commission Creek in Lipscomb
County south of Higgins, where Lou Hays died in 1910. Bonnie
Hays
Lake, near their homesite, bears the name of their daughter.
Mose
Hays, who at one time ran a general merchandise store in
Canadian, later remarried and moved to San Antonio, where he
died
in 1938. Since the 1940s part of the Springer roadhouse site has
been covered by Lake Marvin.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Reginald Aldridge, Life on a Ranch: Ranch Notes in
Kansas, Colorado, the Indian Territory, and Northern Texas (New
York: Appleton, 1884; rpt., New York: Argonaut Press, 1966).
Angie Debo, ed., Cowman's Southwest: Being the Reminiscences of
Oliver Nelson (Glendale, California: Clark, 1953). Glyndon M.
Riley, The History of Hemphill County (M.A. thesis, West Texas
State College, 1939). Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's
Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in the Texas Panhandle,
1876-1887
(Amarillo: Paramount, 1981). F. Stanley, Rodeo Town (Canadian,
Texas) (Denver: World, 1953). Lonnie J. White, comp., "Dodge
City Times, 1877-1885," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review
40 (1967).
H. Allen Anderson
This page was last updated January 9, 2014.