Cattle Brands

The XIT in the bottom row is a Texas brand on a Montana board. Trail driver Ab Blocker devised it for the Panhandle ranch to be run with a straight iron and to be hard for rustlers to alter, and it was recorded in five states, so herds trailed north needed no road brand. From 1890 the syndicate finished its steers on a range headquartered on Cedar Creek north of Terry, driving 10,000 to 20,000 head north a year until settlers' fences closed the trail after 1897. The Montana operation ended in 1909.

What the plaque says

Cattle Brands Many a dogie # (not "doggie" - dudes please note ) has been decorated with one of these famous Montana irons. Running CA · Bug · Seven VM · Square & Compass Seventy nine · Circle C · Shaving mug · Quarter circle U DHS · Monogram SH · Fourty · Lazy H hanging 2 Three Circle · Bar R · L U bar · Reversed E 2 bar N bar N · Flying D · Umbrella · Lazy P swinging 9 Turkey track · Long X · Spearhead · Two pole pumpkin Hat X · Bull head · Rocking Chair · Seven bar seven Three sevens · Two dot · Antler · Monogram FUF N bar · Inverted TX · Three V's · Railroad Track Pitch fork · Hash Knife · Hour glass · Monogram PLE Fish hook · Two A bar · Rafter circle · Horseshoe bar Piece of pie · Mill iron · W bar · Circle diamond G swinging 5 · Circle · U Lazy J · Maltese cross IX · LO · 707 · SL JO · OW · XIT · WM # A dogie is a little calf who has lost its mammy and whose daddy has run off with another cow.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Great Plains Dinosaur Museum — 1.8 mi
  Home of Leonardo, the duckbill that kept its skin for seventy-seven million years, found in the breaks north of Malta in 2000.
• Sleeping Buffalo Rock — 15 mi
  A sacred boulder marked as a resting buffalo, taken off its ridge above the Milk River in the 1930s and sheltered now beside U.S. 2.

More markers nearby

• Early Day Outlaws — 11 mi
• Sleeping Buffalo Rock — 15 mi
• The Long, Long Trail — 15 mi
• Cree Crossing — 19 mi