Fletcher Ranch

The Merino sheep the Fletchers shipped from California belonged to a Texas boom. After the Civil War, sheep ranching spread across the state, peaked in the 1880s and reached the far edge of West Texas, with Merinos and other breeds kept for wool more than mutton. Taylor County counted almost 6,000 sheep in 1880 and 36,000 by 1890, along with more than 200,000 pounds of wool. Then the flocks faded and farming took over. The ranch is private land, and the marker stands at its gates.

What the plaque says

Fletcher Ranch In 1878 James Robert Fletcher, his wife, and son Lorenzo Thomas (1868-1939) came here from Granbury. Their caravan included a small herd of cattle and work animals. A carpenter came to construct a two-story ranch house. Fletcher filed for a patent on this land because of the nearby spring-fed creek, large trees for wood, coved for animal protection and ample grass. The first spring Fletcher planted sorghum for his cattle, making this one of the first cultivated areas in the county. He shipped Merino sheep from California and made an unsuccessful attempt at raising the first sheep on a large scale in the area. Lorenzo ("Lo") walked to school at Buffalo Gap and later to Buffalo Gap Presbyterian College, marking a trail with buffalo skulls which could be seen by moonlight. After his father died in 1886, Lorenzo took over the ranch operations. In 1889 he married Lula May Cummings whom he met at Buffalo Gap College. They had three children. Their daughters have developed the Lytle Cove land into a wildlife refuge for birds, deer, and wild turkey. This ranch is recognized as the oldest property in Taylor County still occupied by the original family. (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Buffalo Gap Historic Village — 8.0 mi
  The 1880 stone courthouse and jail of the county seat Abilene took away, with about twenty old buildings from around West Texas gathered around it since 1956.
• Frontier Texas! — 12 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.
• Abilene State Park — 12 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.
• Z. I. Hale Museum and Rock Hotel — 27 mi
  A free museum in a Winters optometrist's office, a 1909 railroad hotel and a 1927 implement dealership, with Rogers Hornsby's hometown memorabilia and a 1912 horse-drawn cotton picker.

More markers nearby

• Taylor County — 4.0 mi
• Cedar Gap Community — 4.3 mi
• First Anglican Church Service in the Callahan Area — 5.8 mi
• Vicinity of Indian Fight — 7.9 mi