The ranch has perfected water right permits to pump approximately 3,893 acre feet of water annually, which is used to irrigate farmland and water the grounds around major headquarter improvements. They communicate by written memos, even though their offices are separated by only a few feet. Bucky wanted the ranch to be divided, not liquidated. The ranch was established in 1849 and spans six Texas counties and almost 800 square miles. FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) One of the largest ranches in the U.S. and an icon for Texas horse and cattlemen has been listed for $725 million, marking the end of a decades-long courtroom battle among. Ranching operations began with 230 head of longhorn cattle and some horses. It was in terrible condition, Joline explained as she showed me through their home. They chose the latter. Another number brand is placed on the left hip to denote the year. Several small on-site water wells are also located in this large block of farmland. Wichita Falls, the county seat of Wichita County, is approximately 20 miles east of the eastern boundary of the ranch. [8] The ranch spanned more than a million acres of land. The gifts were not entirely altruistic. The squabbling that has ensnared the ranch for almost a century began on Christmas Day of that year, when W.T. Waggoner first settled his wife and son, William Thomas (Tom) Waggoner,qv in a home on Catlett Creek near the site of present Decatur. What he got was just the opposite. My dockets not that crowded, he said. Map: The Waggoner Ranch is really, really big, y'all - MySA On a Dan Waggonerfinanced trip to Fort Worth, Chief Yellow Bear was asphyxiated and Quanah nearly was when the Indians blew out the gas lamp in their hotel room before retiring. Numerous smaller cultivated fields are scattered throughout the ranch. As their cattle business grew, the ranch needed more grazing land, especially as barbed wire began to close in the open range. Electra married A.B. These live creeks and their tributaries provide a desirable source of livestock water throughout the property. Its a perfect October morning, cool and crisp, and the ranch spreads out in every direction, 25 miles north to south, 30 miles east to west. Dan sent Tom (his son), who was only 16 years old at the time, to Kansas City with a herd of 5,000 steers. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. $720,000,000 Wharton, a Philadelphia blue blood she met while traveling in the Himalayas. B. [8] By 1903, he sold some of the land near China Creek to developers. Waggoner raised Quarter Horses on the ranch, including Poco Bueno, who was buried on the ranch. He either didnt care or didnt notice that E. Pauls clanespecially his socialite wife, Helenconsidered Electras line of the family to be tainted and Buster to be an irresponsible spendthrift, and they were plotting for the day when they could force the Whartons out. This rare phenomenon. Today, it is estimated there are over 1,000 producing oil wells on the Waggoner Ranch, with the W.T. 940-552-2521 x:270. Perhaps they are afraid of ghosts. There are several other large ponds, as well as hundreds of livestock ponds scattered throughout the property. Mid America is your local truck topper and trailer dealer in St Louis MO for all your new and used truck toppers in st louis as well as dump trailers and utility flatbed trailers in St Louis MO. The other half belonged to Electra Waggoner Biggs, through various trusts. The 1905 hunt was a classic Waggoner production. Additionally, all livestock (cattle and horses), an extremely substantial inventory of rolling stock, farm equipment, pickups, trucks, etc., and considerable other personal property are included in this offering. The Waggoner Ranch, 550,000 acres extending into six counties, a realm steeped in Texas history, teeters on the brink of liquidation. Though there are more than two thousand miles of road inside the ranch, there are hardly any road signs or navigational landmarks. Roosevelt remembered later: We broke into a lope a mile outside the limits, and by the time we struck the main street, the horses were on a run and we tore down like a whirlwind until we reached the train.. Vernon, the county seat of Wilbarger County, is located approximately 12 miles due north of the ranch. After that, negotiations were dead in the water. Gene remembered it differently. His daddy worked this ranch for fifteen years, and Shane grew up on Cowboy Row. Horses have always been big business at the Waggoner Ranch. This was a time when much of Texas was open range and unexplored. W T Waggoner Ranch Brand Honoring Waggoner Ranch Family and Owners TSHA | Waggoner Ranch - Handbook Of Texas All rights reserved. began courting Quanah Parker, the Comanche chief, with their eyes on the Big Pasture, a huge block of Indian land just across the Red River in what would eventually become Oklahoma. The only time we dont work, Hawley tells me, is when its raining and lightning, or when its very hot. It seems inconceivable that they cant agree on a compromise. By the late fifties, forces were marshalling to ensure total control for E. Paul and his heirs. They buried him standing up, Hughes informs me. Currently, the ranch has a water well lease on a nearby offsite well, which furnishes livestock water through an extensive waterline network to the large block of farmland located on the northwest side of the ranch, and also to the main ranch headquarters. The Waggoner Ranch Reversed D Brand is burned on the right hip of calves, and dates back to June 11, 1849. We report on vital issues from politics to education and are the indispensable authority on the Texas scene, covering everything from music to cultural events with insightful recommendations. [5], Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}3354N 9900W / 33.9N 99.0W / 33.9; -99.0. What the hell could he do with oil! Waggoner Estate Ranch and related assets are now, for the first time ever, being offered for sale at a guideline listed price of. As land was cleared for settlement, he gradually moved west and by the late 1870s settled along Beaver Creek near Electra Texas. The many improvements and related assets mentioned above combine to offer the purchaser an extremely attractive depreciation schedule. Employees of the Waggoner Ranch horse operation concentrate on raising horses for working ranch purposes and strive to create athletic and trainable horses that are 15-hands tall with outstanding conformation. Potential buyers include a group of Japanese investors, Ross Perot Jr., Boone Pickens, even the Mormon churchor so go the rumors. Gene is, by all accounts, gregarious and outgoing, a typical good ol boy who enjoys playing dominoes at the country club. He sits across the table from me in his starched jeans and freshly shined boots, ramrod straight, his hat resting in his lap, his gray hair slicked down. Waggoner's death, his three children, Guy Waggoner, E. Paul Waggoner and Electra Waggoner each inherited a section of the ranch, although there was still a Board of Trustees. All during the spring and summer of 2003, they talked of little else. They say he was as mad as a nest of hornets. Waggoner biographer Roze McCoy Porter writes that Electra spent $90,000 remodeling the one-year-old mansion and another $55,000 on draperies. Though their homesteads are only a few miles apart, the families of Bucky Wharton, the original Electras grandson, and Gene Willingham, Electra IIs son-in-law, might as well live on separate continents. I didnt ask for the nuts and bolts, he said and walked away. [6][12], When Guy Waggoner died in 1950, his sons sold their share of the estate to members of the family. The cowboys are already waiting on horseback just outside the loading pens, cutting up like schoolboys awaiting the bell for recess. Poco Bueno died in 1969 and was buried in a standing position in front of the main ranch entrance. What must be going through his mind? But the Willinghams arent talkingabout the lawsuit or anything else. ACRES Free shipping for many products! The entryway is glass, and there is a skylight over the vaulted ceiling above the staircase. Each camp is equipped with a managers house, outbuildings and pens. Didnt any of them have to work or suffer to get it. Salt cedar is found along creek and river courses, and cedar is moderate to dense in the rougher, eroded areas of the ranch. In the Roaring Twenties, Electra Waggoner was the most infamous socialite in Texas. Texas became the 28th state on December 29, 1845, so the Waggoner Ranch is nearly as old as Texas itself. Today, the ranch boasts 7 stallions and over 90 broodmares containing bloodlines of Poco Bueno, High Brow Cat, Peppy San Badger, Top Sail Cody, Smart Chic Olena, and Wimpys Little Step. Patel Brothers - largest Indian American supermarket chain. To sum up the great legacy of the Waggoner Horse Program, it has produced three AQHA Hall of Fame Members (one Waggoner heir and two Waggoner horses): E. Paul Waggoner, Poco Bueno and Poco Lena; it is the number one All-Time Leading Breeder of NCHA Hall of Fame Members, Poco Lena, Poco Mona, Poco Stampede and Snipper W; it is the number three All-Time Breeder of AQHA Champions; and it is the Breeder of All-Time Leading Sires, Poco Pine, Poco Tivio, Poco Dell and Poco Bob. Traveling to the Four Corners line camp, where Guy Waggoners great home once stood, I tried to imagine that day in the twenties when Anne Burnett Waggoner, the fifth of Guys eight wives, decided shed had enough. This treated water is used for human consumption to serve the substantial headquarter improvements. [8], After the death of Daniel Waggoner in 1902, his son W.T. When Judge Tom Neely, who is in charge of the current lawsuit to break up the ranch, was a young attorney in a previous round of Waggoner lawsuits during the sixties, he and other lawyers found some of E. Pauls letters to Helen. Be alert all the time and ready to go, he says in a strong, sure voice. Passing under a granite arch, we head down a long, paved driveway to Zacaweista, an Indian word meaning good grass. Its the name of both the ranch headquarters and the sprawling rock-and-wood home that Electra built in 1910. [9] One of the lakes on the ranch provides water for the City of Wichita Falls. Concerned about the future of the ranch, W.T. (Waggoner) hit oil instead. On the map of Texas it appears as a great emptiness south of Vernon, occupied only by the thin strip of U.S. 183/283. Dan and W.T. All canvas prints are professionally printed, assembled, and shipped within 3 - 4 business days and delivered ready-to-hang on your wall. 510,527.00 WHAT WE DO: We deliver strategic, brand-driven marketing communications solutions and deploy content that truly resonates . ACRES 825,000. As the frontier pushed westward, he expanded his herd and bought more land, in Clay and Wichita counties. She was strikingly pretty, with a long, sensitive face and dark, sparkling eyes. After Buckys father died, Lula [the last of Busters four wives] stripped this place. asked his children to draw cards for the three parcels. Who was going to be responsible for it? American Made Cap has manufactured for all types of customers, from professional baseball teams to local ranches, including the world-famous Waggoner Ranch just down the road. The Waggoner has been owned by the same family almost as long as Texas been a state. We opened it up. Today the home is bright and welcoming. As it turned out, he didnt. Jim Hughes, a longtime attorney for the Waggoner estate who was being groomed to become a trustee before the feud cost him the opportunity, slows down as a dozen or more wild turkeys scamper across the highway and disappear into thick stands of mesquite. She took everythingthe furniture, even the light fixtures. Handsome and trim, Joline once competed in the New York and Paris marathons and still gets up before first light to run. By 1881, his ranch had reached its modern dimensions: half a million acres sprawling over six counties the largest ranch in Texas under a single fence. The Waggoner is one of the 20 largest cattle ranches in the U.S. and is known worldwide for its quarter horses. This land sits atop the Seymour Aquifer, while the ranch itself is bone-dry. Sign up to receive timely, useful information in your inbox. The Waggoner is the largest U.S. ranch within one fence, measuring 520,527 acres (207,000 hectares) or 800 square miles (2,072 square kilometers). declared a misdeal and had them draw again. I can remember the Firestones and the Beverages and the cream of New York society flying in for those matches, Don Ross Malone, a Vernon attorney and son of the former game warden for the ranch, told me. The King Ranch, based in south Texas, has more acreage spread over several parcels. G. Our ranching operation includes, cattle, horses and the farm. Both ranches once covered more than a million acres. You get in here far enough, it just swallows you up, Hughes tells me. Legend has it that Electra once blew $1 million in a single day at Neiman Marcus. Electra prevailed, as usual. The Waggoner Ranch fully supports the AQHA initiative to implement the Ranchers Heritage Breeders Program and the AQHA Versatility Ranch Horse Program with current staff serving as a member of two AQHA Committees. Without a trustee to keep them at arms length, they set off on a collision course. Since his retirement, in 1991, Proctor has lived in Vernon, raising a few cows and tending his yard. | At one dinner party, two Texans pulled six-guns from their dinner jackets and shot up the ceiling. The Waggoner (Three D) Ranch had its beginnings in the early 1850s when Daniel Waggonerqv and a fifteen-year-old black slave trailed 242 longhorn cattleqv and six horses into Wise County. The W.T. Making Texas history: Legendary Waggoner Ranch sells to Rams owner He built the newlyweds an eighteen-room mansion in Fort Worth, where he later built a twenty-story office building as the base for his empire. This historic brand has been used in one form or another since that date, making it one of the very oldest brands in Texas. Thats what folks in Vernon, Electra, Seymour, and other towns near the Waggoner Ranch are asking as they watch one of Texass greatest ranching empires teeter on the brink of disintegration. Neither of her parents came to the wedding; biographer Porter reports that E. Paul and Helen were having marital problems. That became the seed money for the Waggoner empire. When E. Paul drew Zacaweista instead, W.T. As a consequence, the King Ranch scions moved comfortably in elite Texas social, political, and business circles, while the Waggoners never achieved the same degree of prominence. Waggoner Estate Ranch and related assets are now, for the first time ever, being offered for sale at a guideline listed price of $725,000,000. Mammoth estate to be split up, auctioned - Chron One morning she packed, jumped in her car, and headed for town, not bothering to stop and open any of the ten gates on the way. A good cowboy does what the foreman tells him and waits for his paycheck and for the sun to go down., Now the sun is going down on the Waggoner Ranch, perhaps forever. Poco Bueno sired 36 AQHA Champions, and many of his offspring have excelled in all the different disciplines of modern day horse events. It was a crash course, but I learned more in those six months than Id learned my whole life. In 1975 he married Joline, a young woman he had met in Albuquerque seven years earlier. There is a photograph of her in the Red River Valley Museum, near Vernon College, along with a large collection of her work: busts of Will Rogers, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Bob Hope, Knute Rockne, Amon Carter, John Nance Garner. The settlers, most of them German or Czech, moved north of Paradise Creek, which runs just beyond the present northern boundary of the ranch. But W.T. These cows are bred to Hereford, Angus, and Charolais bulls. The little village of Lockett, where the descendants of those settlers now live, is wet in another way: It is the nearest spot where citizens of Vernon can buy beer and liquor. The current inventory of studs, mares, geldings and colts is approximately 474 head. He owns a bank, an oil company, and a cattle company, but he is happiest when he is working outdoors or having dinner with his family. 1700 Deaf Smith St., Vernon, TX 76384, US. This iconic ranch property has been owned and operated by Waggoner heirs for approximately 165 years. [6] It is the second largest ranch in Texas (after the King Ranch),[6] enclosing 510,527 acres (207,000ha; 798sqmi; 2,070km2) of land. Millionaire ranchers from Argentina and the elite of East Coast society came in their private planes for weekends of polo and debauchery. Some of the wells discovered in the 1920s are still in operation. In one last attempt to keep the range open, W.T. They still talk here of Paul Whitley, an unmarried cowboy who in 1950 rode his horse to Cedar Top, the most remote camp on the ranch, and lived alone in a primitive cabin until his final illness, in 2002. Nothing is too trivial to spark an argument. Guy, who eventually settled on another ranch the family owned in New Mexico, married eight times. I tried college in Vernon for a little while, but it wasnt for me. [13] He once played there with polo champion Cecil Smith. Cowboying isnt a profession, its a life, but if the Waggoner Ranch is broken up into pieces, that life will exist no more. L. Proctor was foreman when I got here, and I made him my model., The ranch has about thirty cowboys, many of them second- and third-generation Waggoner employees. The Waggoner Ranch Store is located in the Waggoner Estate building in Vernon Texas. As a boy, Bucky visited the ranch at Christmas and during the summer, but he was never close to his father and knew nothing about cattle or oil. In 1869 Dan made seventeen-year-old W.T. Santa Rosa Lake covers approximately 1,400 surface acres when full. cattle inventory, horse inventory, horse facilities, brands . A unified decision has now been made by the shareholders to sell this legendary ranch. The second Electra was, like her namesake, a globe-hopping socialite (she was once linked romantically to Cary Grant by Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons), but she also was an acclaimed artist, who knew all the celebrities of her day and sculpted busts of many of them. They have been up since three and have had a hefty cookhouse breakfast of eggs, sausage, bacon, potatoes, biscuits, and gravy. Yesterday a helicopter herded one hundred mother cows and their calves into a trapa corner of the large pastureand soon cowboys on horseback will be stripping the calves away from their mothers, herding them into separate pens and loading them onto trucks for transportation to other parts of the ranch. This will still be ranchland, for thats all its fit to be, but not ranching on the grand scale that allows men to be cowboys. Shortly before she ended her eighteen-year marriage to A.B., she purchased another magnificent home on Preston Road in Highland Park and named it Shadowlawn. Most sets of pens are capable of handling several thousand head of cattle at one time. W.T. Waggoner Estate Ranch | Chas S. Middleton In addition to Lake Kemp and Lake Diversion, the ranch boasts several other large private lakes, some of which, such as Santa Rosa Lake, are reserved for the exclusive use of the families. Historically, the Waggoner Ranch has been operated as a cow/calf ranching unit, with stocker cattle used for seasonal grazing on wheat fields. Waggoner, a widower, and his young son, William Thomas, settled on Catlett Creek, near present-day Decatur. Waggoner divided the Waggoner Ranch into four subsections: one for himself (White Face); and three smaller 8,500 acre sub-ranches for his children: Zacaweista, Four Corners, and Santa Ros. So it was the King Ranch whose legend was set down for posterity by the distinguished Texas author Tom Lea, while the Waggoners escapades were left to be recorded by the English author John Bainbridgea few passages in his 1960 book called The Super-Americans, about the excesses of Texass oil millionaires.
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