Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association

Rustlers gave the association its start, but a fly gave it one of its largest campaigns. The Handbook of Texas says that in the late 1950s association officers went to Florida to see screwworm eradication at work and then helped start the same effort in the Southwest. Stock owners paid much of the early cost, and the association worked through a research foundation and government agencies on the release of millions of radiation-sterilized flies. The Handbook rates the program among the most useful of the century for livestock producers. In 1961 the association also opened a cattle feeders division.

What the plaque says

Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association On February 15, 1877, a large number of stock raisers from northwest Texas assembled in the Young County Courthouse in Graham to address the problem of cattle rustling. Their solution was the creation of the "Stock-Raisers' Association of North-West Texas." The organization worked to promote the interests of stock raisers and initiated a system of tracking stray or stolen cattle. Names, marks, brands, locations of ranches, and addresses of individual stock raisers were made available to each member. C.L. (Kit) Carter of Palo Pinto County served as the association's first president. Other prominent cattlemen involved in the group's formative years were C.C. Slaughter, Samuel Burk Burnett, and James C. Loving. During the 1893 Annual Convention, membership in the organization was opened to the entire state, and its name was changed to the "Cattle Raisers Association of Texas." In the same year, Fort Worth became the location of its permanent headquarters. The current name was adopted in 1921, when the Panhandle and Southwestern Stockmen's Association joined the Texas organization. Throughout its history, the association has provided significant service and leadership to the cattle industry of Texas. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tarrant County Courthouse — 0.6 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 1.4 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 1.7 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 2.7 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.

More markers nearby

• First Presbyterian Church of Fort Worth — 0.2 mi
• Masonic Temple of Fort Worth — 0.3 mi
• Freese and Nichols, Inc. — 0.3 mi
• Amon G. Carter — 0.5 mi