Historical Marker
Lucille Nance Jones
Randall County · Texas
Erected 2020
Her gift became part of an agricultural campus. By the time West Texas State joined the Texas A&M University System in 1990 and was renamed West Texas A&M University in 1992, it had a 186-acre farm, a University Horse Center and a dairy in addition to its Nance Ranch, listed at 2,400 acres. The college had long held ranch land: it occupied part of the old T Anchor, and the state had bought that ranch's headquarters and 200 acres as an experimental farm. An applied science building housed its agricultural education department.
What the plaque says
Lucille Nance Jones (November 20, 1904 - December 1, 1977) Bessie Lucille Parker was born in Arkansas to Thomas M. Parker and Jessie (Lay) Parker. The family moved to Texas and in 1924, Lucille married George E. Nance (1896-1954), a Hallettsville native. Lucille and George settled in the Canyon area and established the Nance Hereford Ranch. By 1925, the ranch covered 6,000 acres and primarily dealt in cattle. Through the 1940s and 1950s, the Nance Ranch produced champion cattle and was nationally known as a leading purebred Hereford breeder. After George died, Lucille operated the ranch, but eventually she leased the land to others. In 1956, she married investment banker Lovell Leslie Jones (1899-1982). They decided to move into town and build a house in 1963, working closely with architect Norris E. Root, II, to retain their extensive antique collection. Each room was designed to accommodate specific furnishings. Lucille Nance Jones collected rococo-style items and art as she traveled around the world on vacations and to various livestock shows. Later in life, Lucille began to donate items to various museums and institutions, including many art pieces, antiques and a bronze longhorn steer to the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum. In 1970, she donated more than 2,000 acres, including the headquarters of The Nance Ranch, to West Texas State University (now West Texas A&M University) to be used for agricultural education. After her death, she was laid to rest in Dreamland Cemetery outside Canyon next to her first husband George Nance. Through her influence as a rancher, businesswoman and art collector. Lucille Nance Jones established a lasting legacy in West Texas. (2020)
Where it stands
34.97742, -101.90789 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — 0.6 miThe 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.
- Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 12 miA 1938 Depression-era lake on Tierra Blanca Creek that has gone dry, now 7,664 acres of shortgrass, cottonwood canyon and a prairie dog town on the High Plains south of Umbarger.
- Palo Duro Canyon State Park — 12 miThe upper end of the canyon the state bought in 1933, where CCC crews built the road to the floor and the army burned the winter camps of the Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne in 1874.
- TEXAS Outdoor Musical — 12 miA summer pageant of Panhandle settler life staged since 1966 in the Pioneer Amphitheater, built into a basin of Palo Duro Canyon below a 600-foot cliff.