Amarillo Livestock Auction

The man who bought the yards in 1940 came from oil. Jay Taylor, born on the Suggs Ranch near Bowie in 1902, quit petroleum engineering at the University of Oklahoma for Halliburton when the Panhandle boom began in 1926 and rose to run its well-service company from Amarillo. He married Imogene Herring, daughter of the cattleman C. T. Herring, built up the Rafter O near Vega and chaired the Dallas Federal Reserve board. He and Eddie Johnson paid about $5,000 each for the auction, and as a beef promoter in the 1950s he was called Mr. Beef.

What the plaque says

Amarillo Livestock Auction Established to serve the first permanent industry in the Texas Panhandle--ranching. Now famed for handling more cattle than any other commission auction company in the United States. The years 1874-1878 saw Indians expelled, buffalo herds exterminated, and ranches established in the region. Longhorns were trailed to Dodge City for shipment. After railroads came, ranchmen rode the cattle trains to care for herds en route to market. Railroad construction across the Texas Panhandle in 1887 established Amarillo as the largest rural cattle shipping point in the nation (1892-1897). More efficient handling began in 1904 with the founding by O.H. Nelson, Al Popham, and associates of the Western Stockyards, predecessor of Amarillo Livestock Auction. This livestock commission market opened in 1935 with the sale of 36 cattle and 21 horses by Jack Coulter, Auctioneer, and Virgil Light, Manager. In 1940 Jay Taylor and Eddie Johnson bought the Western Stockyards and constructed the present sales ring, incorporated 1945 as Amarillo Livestock Auction Company. Marketing was revolutionized. Annual sales exceed 400,000 cattle valued at more than $78,000,000. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Route 66 Sixth Street Historic District — 3.6 mi
  Thirteen blocks of Amarillo's streetcar suburb that Route 66 turned into a roadside strip, from the 1922 Nat to Texaco, Phillips and Dutch Mill stations, now shops and bars.
• Helium Centennial Time Columns Monument — 6.2 mi
  Four sealed time capsules raised in Amarillo in 1968 for helium's centennial, in the city that for years produced almost all the world's commercial helium from the Cliffside field.
• Cadillac Ranch — 10 mi
  Ten Cadillacs from 1949 to 1963 planted nose down in a pasture west of Amarillo by the Ant Farm collective in 1974, on private land where visitors are let in to paint them.
• Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — 17 mi
  The Panhandle's great collection, some two million objects behind a 1933 Art Deco hall carved with cattle brands, closed to the public since March 2025 over fire-safety violations.

More markers nearby

• Amarillo Tri-State Fair — 0.8 mi
• A.T. & S.F. No. 5000 "Madam Queen" — 1.5 mi
• Henry Bradley Sanborn — 1.6 mi
• Amarillo — 1.6 mi