Bud Matthews Switch of the Texas Central Railway

John Alexander "Bud" Matthews was born in Spearsville, Louisiana, on March 2, 1853, and grew up near Fort Griffin. In 1872 he took charge of a herd driven from southeastern Colorado to the Humboldt River in Nevada. He married Sallie Ann Reynolds on Christmas Day 1876, joined the Northwest Texas Cattle Raisers Association in its first year, 1877, and after a ranching partnership with George Thomas and William D. Reynolds ended in 1885 built the J. A. Matthews Ranch Company, headquartered at Lambshead. He served as county judge in 1895-96 and helped found Reynolds Presbyterian Academy.

What the plaque says

In 1900 the Texas Central Railway extended a line northwest from Albany across this portion of Rose Ella (Matthews) Conrad's cattle ranch. Ella and her brother John A. "Bud" Matthews, for whom this site is named, promptly constructed cattle pens and a loading chute at this location. Surrounding ranchers soon were shipping their cattle from this switch to markets in Fort Worth. As many as 105,000 head of cattle were shipped annually until the railroad ceased operations in 1967. Since that year local ranchers have continued to load cattle onto trucks from this site. (1992)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Phantom Hill — 11 mi
  A field of lone stone chimneys north of Abilene, left by the fire after the Army left in 1854, later a stage stop and a buffalo-hide town of more than 500 people.
• Old Jail Art Center — 13 mi
  An art museum in Albany's 1878 stone jail, where the masons carved their initials to be sure of pay, now holding Chinese tomb figures and works by Picasso and Klee.
• Fort Griffin State Historic Site — 21 mi
  The ruins of an 1867 cavalry post on a plateau above the Clear Fork of the Brazos, judged unfit for habitation and used nine more years, now home to the official state longhorn herd.
• Frontier Texas! — 23 mi
  Abilene's multimedia museum of the frontier as the settlers told it, beside the Texas and Pacific tracks the town was built on, and the official visitor center for the Texas Forts Trail.

More markers nearby

• Big Country Baptist Assembly — 6.7 mi
• Fort Phantom Hill — 11 mi
• Shackelford County — 13 mi
• Ledbetter Salt Work, C.S.A. — 13 mi