Historical Marker
The LX, First Ranch in Potter County
Amarillo, Potter County · Texas
Erected 1971
David T. Beals ran the LX from a distance. A Massachusetts native, he learned the shoe trade and sold boots in western mining camps before turning to cattle in 1873. Unlike ranchers who counted on free grass, he bought land from 1881, and because he could buy only two sections in every four, LX holdings show as a checkerboard on old maps. He brought in Durham and Hereford bulls and fattened cattle on feeding ranches in the Cherokee Strip. In Kansas City he founded the Union National Bank in 1887, and he died there in 1910.
What the plaque says
The LX First Ranch in Potter County Established by W. H. Bates and D. T. Beals, Colorado merchants and ranchers on the Arkansas River since 1870. "Crowded conditions" there resulted in moving herd and brand to the Panhandle of Texas in 1877 -- three years after Indians were expelled from this region. LX cattle were being driven to Dodge City for shipment to market or to ranges in Montana and Wyoming as the buffalo were being exterminated in the area. The ranch extended from present cities of Dumas (30 mi. N) to Amarillo (20 mi. S), and was 20 miles wide--1,000 square miles of open range. The ranch was sold in 1884 to the American Pastoral Company, Ltd., London. Ownership included 210,597 acres of land, 45,000 cattle and 1,000 horses. Famous LX cowboys included Allie Bates and John Ray, whose names are on geological maps, and Charles Siringo, author of Western Americana and cattle rustler detective. Potter County was organized on Aug. 30, 1887 by 53 qualified electors. By unanimous vote of the 38 LX cowboys, Amarillo was elected the county seat. In 1906 the Pastoral Company began liquidating. Heirs of large purchasers now own the properties. (1971)
Where it stands
35.45525, -101.86979 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument — 13 miHand-dug pits on a mesa above the Canadian River where people quarried banded flint for thousands of years and traded it across the Plains, seen on a ranger-led climb.
- Route 66 Sixth Street Historic District — 17 miThirteen 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 — 18 miFour 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 — 20 miTen 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.