Briscoe County Ranches
SHOE BAR RANCH
QUITAQUE RANCH
JA RANCH
SHOE BAR RANCH
The Shoe Bar Ranch, noted for its
frequent changes of ownership, began in 1879 when Leigh R. Dyer,
after the sale of his Randall County ranchhouse, moved his herd
to Deep Lake, between the Little Red and Prairie Dog Town forks
of the Red River in Hall County. On Oxbow Creek, near its
junction with the Little Red, he built a rock house, probably for
a headquarters. Afterward, part of Dyer's herd was reportedly
lost to Texas fever caught from cattle that had recently arrived
from South Texas. In 1880 L. C. (Uncle Luke) Coleman, who had
ranched in southern Colorado north of Raton Pass, formed a
partnership with Dyer after wintering his herd near the site of
present-day Canyon. In September of that year they bought acreage
along Antelope Creek in Hall and Briscoe counties. About this
time Leigh's brother, Walter, and sister, Mary Ann Dyer
Goodnight, brought from the JA Ranch their joint herd of Flying T
cattle. Although there was never a written agreement, they shared
the Dyer-Coleman range and secured a one-third interest in
Coleman and Company. The Shoe Bar brand probably came into use as
early as 1882, when Thomas S. Bugbee and Orville H. Nelson bought
the 2,500 Flying T cattle and the one-third interest for
$110,000. After adding another 15,000 head, including 8,000 from
the JA, Bugbee and Nelson were able to buy enough interest from
Coleman and Dyer to give them half interest in the ranch. Coleman
officially registered the Shoe Bar brand on August 7, 1883.
Bugbee built an adobe headquarters on Oakes Creek, two miles
north of the site of present-day Lakeview, with lumber hauled in
from Dodge City. From there he ran his and Nelson's share of the
herd, while Coleman operated from a dugout on Oxbow Creek.
At its peak the Shoe Bar range covered 350,000 acres of leased
land and 110,000 acres of land bought in Donley, Hall, and
Briscoe counties. The cattle numbered around 50,000 head, with an
annual calf crop of 14,000. Both underground and surface water
were always plentiful. Although Coleman was initially opposed to
fencing the ranch, he later relented and supervised the erection
of 100 miles of fence over a seemingly limitless sea of grass.
John Pope served as foreman from 1881 to 1898, and other
outstanding ranch employees included Bob Crabb, Joe Merrick, Roy
Allard, and Joe Horn. In 1886 Chris Rudolph and James E.
Southwood helped drive the Shoe Bar's first Herefords from Dodge
City to their new range. In 1886 Nelson sold his interest in the
Shoe Bar to Bugbee in order to devote more time to his
townsite-company projects. Soon afterward Dyer sold his share to
Coleman. Although Uncle Luke's family lived in Kansas City, he
spent much time at the ranch and became a favorite among the
cowboys. When the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway was built
through the Panhandle in 1887, Giles became the Shoe Bar's main
shipping point. The final details of organizing Hall County were
completed in the Oakes Creek headquarters on May 4 of that year.
After Coleman died in 1894, his widow sold her share of the Shoe
Bar to J. K. Zimmerman, an eccentric bachelor of about sixty who
was said to have made a fortune in mining and had large ranch
holdings in Oklahoma. Andrew J. Snyder purchased the Bugbee
interest, but the following year he was taken "to a
hundred-thousand-dollar cleaning" when Zimmerman bought him
out in a "give-or-take" proposition. Although he was
extremely nearsighted, Zimmerman spent much time at the ranch
living at the Oxbow headquarters. He encouraged Shoe Bar
employees to become financially independent and often helped them
purchase land and stock of their own. After Zimmerman's death in
1898, F. P. Neal, of the Union National Bank of Kansas City,
managed the estate and kept the Shoe Bar going until 1906. That
year he sold the ranch to Edward F. Swift of the Chicago packing
company (see SWIFT AND COMPANY) for about $1.5 million. William
H. Craven, who made the deal for Swift, became manager and built
a large ranchhouse east of Lakeview, where he lived for several
years. Almost immediately after the Swift purchase, Craven began
shipping the Shoe Bar cattle out and selling the land in
individual tracts to farmers and smaller ranchers, a process he
completed by 1913. The largest sale was made in 1910 to William
J. Lewis of Clarendon, about 43,000 acres south of the Red River.
Lewis ran the Shoe Bar brand from the old Oxbow Creek
headquarters. After his death in 1960, the brand was continued by
his daughter-in-law, Vera Lewis. The Oakes Creek headquarters and
the land surrounding it were sold by Craven to W. D. Beck in
1907. After 1928 this historic ranch dwelling was owned and
occupied by the family of J. H. Barbee.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Inez Baker, Yesterday in Hall County (Memphis,
Texas, 1940). Virginia Browder, Donley County: Land O' Promise
(Wichita Falls, Texas: Nortex, 1975). 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
QUITAQUE RANCH
The Quitaque (Lazy F) Ranch was begun
by the brothers George and Jim Baker of San Saba County, who
formed a cattle partnership. It was named for its location on
Quitaque Creek, near its confluence with the Tongue and Pease
rivers and near the site of the Valley of Tears, where
Comancheros traded with Indians until the Red River War of 1874.
This site was well watered by the three rivers, and before 1878
Jake Fields, a buffalo hunter, was the only area resident. In the
summer of 1878 the Baker brothers hired Leigh R. Dyer to drive
the first herd to the Quitaque country from their Cimarron River
range. These cattle, mostly high-grade shorthorns, bore the Lazy
F brand. O. J. Wiren, hired as foreman by the Bakers, brought in
the second herd a month later and was placed in charge of the
ranch. Mixed in with this Lazy F herd were a number of Wiren's
own, branded with his Square-Topped Hat. The first headquarters
was a cluster of dugouts built in the bank of the creek by the
cowhands. Smaller line camps were also constructed on the range.
Shortly after the ranch was established, Wiren was taken into
partnership with the Bakers. In 1880 he and two Wisconsin
lumbermen, Kellogg and McCoy, bought out the Baker interests. In
addition to the Lazy F and Hat brands, the Dipper was also used
by the new partnership. Noted cowboys on the Quitaque Ranch
included John Farrington and the brothers Al and Jim Cook, who
reportedly went to great lengths to keep New Mexican sheepmen
from drifting onto the range.
By 1882 the Quitaque Ranch covered 140,000 acres in Briscoe,
Floyd, and Hall counties. Early that year, allegedly to prevent a
range war, Kellogg, McCoy, and Wiren sold their holdings to
Charles Goodnight, who, at the request of his JA Ranch partner
John G. Adair, was buying up most of the land around Quitaque
Creek for Adair's wife, Cornelia. Goodnight purchased the
ranchland at twenty-two cents an acre. At that time the ranch
contained about twice the purchased acres, counting interspersed,
state-owned school lands left free for grazing. Including the
2,000 head of Lazy F cattle, Goodnight invested some $100,000 in
the Quitaque purchase. Under Goodnight's management, the Lazy F
prospered for a time. A five-room headquarters was built, along
with various outbuildings, out of lumber freighted in by wagon
from Fort Worth. Walter Dyer, Goodnight's brother-in-law and
range foreman, erected a spacious house on the upper reaches of
the Quitaque. In 1883 Goodnight fenced the Quitaque pastures with
barbed wire hauled to the site by freighters, who made profits
from the return loads of buffalo bones they gathered on the range
(see BONE BUSINESS).
After Adair died in 1885, Goodnight continued to manage the
Quitaque for Mrs. Adair until December 1887, when they divided
the JA property. As part of the negotiation Goodnight assumed
full ownership of the Quitaque. The following year, to ease the
financial strain, he sold a half-interest in the ranch to L. R.
Moore of Kansas City and continued using the Lazy F brand. By
1890, with the influx of farmers into the area, Goodnight and
Moore began experiencing occasional problems: mavericking of Lazy
F stock, set grass fires, and vandalism of ranch fences. That
year Goodnight disposed of his remaining half-interest to Moore
in order to pursue his silver-mining venture in Mexico. A new
ranch headquarters was located on the junction of Quitaque and
Los Lingos creeks in 1894. Moore retained sole ownership of the
Quitaque until 1904, when he sold the Lazy F cattle to Henry W.
Cresswell and A. J. (Tony) Day. These cattle were shipped by four
consecutive rail lines to pastures in Canada. Cresswell and Day
then parceled out the Quitaque range to farmers, and the Lazy F
brand was discontinued. The town of Quitaque was located on a
portion of this land, eight miles north of the former ranch
headquarters.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Briscoe County Historical Survey Committee,
Footprints of Time in Briscoe County (Dallas: Taylor, 1976).
Harley True Burton, A History of the JA Ranch (Austin: Von
Boeckmann-Jones, 1928; rpt., New York: Argonaut, 1966). J. Evetts
Haley, Charles Goodnight (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1949). Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's Country: Fifty
Frontier Ranches in the Texas Panhandle, 1876-1887 (Amarillo:
Paramount, 1981).
H. Allen Anderson
JA RANCH
The JA Ranch is the oldest privately
owned cattle operation in the Panhandle. Its beginning may be
traced back to the summer and fall of 1876, when Charles
Goodnight drove 1,600 longhorn cattle from Pueblo, Colorado, to
the Palo Duro Canyon, where he established his "Home
Ranch" near the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River in
southwestern Armstrong County. After getting his men and cattle
settled in for the winter, Goodnight returned to Colorado to make
arrangements to bring his wife, Mary Ann (Molly) Goodnight, to
the new homestead. In Denver he met John G. Adair, an English
aristocrat who was interested in going into the cattle business
himself. As a result of their meeting, Adair agreed to furnish
the capital Goodnight needed to build up the ranch. In May 1877
the Goodnights and Adair, along with four cowboys, arrived at the
Home Ranch with 100 Durham bulls and four wagons loaded with
provisions. On June 18, before the Adairs left for Ireland, the
partners drew up a five-year contract under which two-thirds of
the property and profits were to go to Adair and one-third to
Goodnight. There were to be as many as 1,500 cattle and 2,500
acres of land. Goodnight, who borrowed his third of the
investment from Adair at 10 percent interest, was to receive an
annual salary of $2,500. At Goodnight's suggestion the ranch was
named Adair's initials. The letters of the JA brand at first were
separated; three years later the present connected design was
adopted.
After the money was made available, Goodnight bought the first
12,000 acres from Jot Gunter and William B. Munson, Sr.,q who
agreed that he could pick the land wherever he pleased. Over the
next two years he continued buying choice pieces of property
crazy-quilt fashion in and around a seventy-five-mile stretch of
Palo Duro Canyon, carefully selecting areas with good grazing
land and water, until the ranch was solidified. In 1878 he drove
the first JA trail herd, led by his famous bell ox Old Blue,
north to Dodge City, Kansas, then the nearest railhead. In 1879,
desiring a more central location for the ranch headquarters,
Goodnight moved it to a choice site at the foot of the Caprock,
twenty-five miles east of the old Home Ranch. There he built a
new four-room house of cedar logs and supervised the construction
of several other buildings, including a bunkhouse, a bookkeeper's
house, a wagon boss's house, a blacksmith shop, a wagonyard, and
an ingenious milk and meat cooler. Later on, the two-story,
nineteen-room main house was added. The old Home Ranch house was
used as a line camp until it burned down on Christmas Eve, 1904.
As manager of the JA, Goodnight allowed no gambling, whiskey, or
fighting, and would not take anyone who had been fired elsewhere
for drunkenness or theft. Even so, he usually was able to hire
the men he needed. Cape (Caleb B.) Willingham, Wint Bairfield,
Jim (James T.) Christian,q Frank Mitchell, J. W. Kent, George
Doshier, Mitch Bell, and the brothers Judd, Jeff, and Lige
Campbell were among the outstanding JA employees during its early
years. Goodnight's brothers-in-law, Walter and Leigh R. Dyer,
also worked off and on for the JA, particularly during
traildrives and roundups. Almost from the start, Goodnight had
sought to improve the quality of the JA cattle by bringing in
blooded stock. In 1882 he built what is thought to have been the
Panhandle's first barbed wire drift fence across a canyon bed
above the Home Ranch to separate the purebred cattle, on which he
used a JJ brand, from the main JA herd. He also kept a buffalo
herd which he sought to cross with cattle to produce the
"cattalo."
By the time their contract expired in 1882, Goodnight and Adair
had bought 93,000 acres and were looking for more. In addition,
Goodnight had purchased the Quitaque (Lazy F) range in Briscoe
County for Cornelia Adair, and the Palo Duro post office had been
established at the JA headquarters. To Adair's satisfaction, the
enterprise had realized more than $512,000 in profits; thus the
partners opted to extend the contract for another five-year
period. In 1883 Goodnight fenced the Quitaque properties and
added the Tule Ranch in Swisher County, which he fenced in
1884-85, to the JA properties. He also made other purchases from
Gunter and Munson, the railroads, and the state that increased
the ranch's size to 1,325,000 acres in parts of Randall,
Armstrong, Donley, Hall, Briscoe, and Swisher counties.
After John Adair's death in 1885, following his third visit to
the JA, his widow continued the partnership with Goodnight. By
1887, however, with the building of the Fort Worth and Denver
City Railway, falling beef prices, the influx of settlers, and
attempts by politicians to curb large-scale ranching, the colonel
was ready to sell out and limit his ranching activities; thus
their partnership was terminated on the expiration of the
contract. Nevertheless, Goodnight, who acquired the Quitaque
Ranch in the division of property, continued to act as manager
until 1888, when he was succeeded by John C. Farrington, who
served in that position for three years. James W. (Jack) Ritchie,
Mrs. Adair's son by her first marriage, served briefly as foreman
of the ranch's steer division in Tule Canyon before returning to
New York City to handle the purchase of JA horses for the New
York police department. Arthur Tisdale managed the JA in 1891 and
was succeeded the following year by Richard Walsh, an Irish
immigrant who had been with the ranch since 1885. Under his
leadership, improvements continued to be made through
crossbreeding with blooded Hereford and Angus stock in the JA
herd, which had increased to 101,023 head by 1889. Walsh soon
built up one of the finest-quality herds of cattle in the nation.
As the railroads brought in more settlers, the JA began leasing
and selling much of its excess pasture. When several nesters
located on school lands within the JA boundaries, Walsh shrewdly
purchased their claims or traded land outside the range for their
holdings within, thus consolidating the JA properties. In 1891 a
school was opened for the children of ranch employees and
neighboring settlers, in the Palo Duro community near the ranch
headquarters. Over the years the ranch was gradually reduced in
size as longtime employees like George Doshier, Wint Bairfield,
Mitch Bell, and Jim Christian began their own operations on
former JA lands. In 1917 Edward D. Harrell purchased the acreage
where the old Home Ranch was located, and the Mulberry Ranch,
named for the creek that drains it, was formed out of the JA's
Mulberry Division.
After Walsh resigned as a manager in 1910, John S. Summerfield
served for a year in that capacity and then was succeeded by
James W. Wadsworth, Jr., a nephew of Cornelia Adair. Wadsworth
held that position until 1915, when he was elected to the United
States Senate from his home state of New York. At that time,
Timothy D. Hobart of Pampa was named to succeed him; he and Henry
C. Coke, a Dallas attorney, were named executors of Cornelia
Adair's estate after her death in December 1921. In her will she
left the bulk of the JA properties to her son, Jack Ritchie, and
his heirs. Clinton Henry came as the ranch bookkeeper in 1924 and
assisted Hobart in the management. In 1935, after Hobart and Coke
died, Montgomery H. W. (Monte) Ritchie took over as manager. J.
W. Kent retired in 1940, after having worked for a record number
of years (since 1883) for the JA. Not until 1948 was the Adair
estate, with its accompanying debts and inheritances, entirely
settled.
By 1945 the JA's operations were confined to 335,000 acres in
Armstrong, Briscoe, Donley, and Hall counties. Subsequently, a
tract of 130,000 acres was divided into eight leaseholds to
decrease labor and costs further. Watered by the Prairie Dog Town
Fork and its tributaries plus several hundred natural lakes, dirt
tanks, and fifty-eight wells, the ranch had twelve winter branch
camps and five farms that raised feed for the livestock. The
winter range in Palo Duro Canyon afforded maximum protection, and
the summer range was singularly free from land waste. Nearly
two-thirds of the extant JA properties was rolling pastureland;
even the land north and west of the headquarters was relatively
flat. As of 1990 the ranch was substantially fenced and
cross-fenced and noted for its purebred Herefords and Angus
bulls. Quarter horses were raised primarily for ranch use, and a
small buffalo herd was maintained; some commercial hunting of
buffalo and deer was allowed. Tillable land continued to be
leased. The Ritchie family also owned ranchland at Larkspur,
Colorado, near Colorado Springs.
In 1988 the JA headquarters comprised several ranch outbuildings,
including a supply store and garage, and was dominated by the
"Big House," whose grounds were well manicured. A herd
of longhorns, courtesy of the JA, roamed in Palo Duro Canyon
State Scenic Park. In 1960 the house was designated a national
historic landmark. Two of the JA's historic buildings, the old
milk house and an oat bin, were given by Monte Ritchie to the
Ranching Heritage Center at Lubbock in 1971 and 1988,
respectively.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Armstrong County Historical Association, A
Collection of Memories: A History of Armstrong County, 1876-1965
(Hereford, Texas: Pioneer, 1965). Harley True Burton, A History
of the JA Ranch (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1928; rpt., New
York: Argonaut, 1966). Gus L. Ford, ed., Texas Cattle Brands
(Dallas: Cockrell, 1936). J. Evetts Haley, Charles Goodnight
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949). JA Ranch Records,
Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum Research Center, Canyon,
Texas. Dorothy Abbott McCoy, Texas Ranchmen (Austin: Eakin Press,
1987). Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's Country: Fifty
Frontier Ranches in the Texas Panhandle, 1876-1887 (Amarillo:
Paramount, 1981).
H. Allen Anderson
(information from The
Handbook of Texas Online --
a multidisciplinary encyclopedia of Texas history, geography, and
culture.)
This page last updated August 16, 2000.