Historical Marker
The Free Range Era of Ranching
Lubbock, Lubbock County · Texas
Erected 1970
Lubbock County itself filled slowly behind the free rangers. The 1880 census found twenty-five people, most of them sheep raisers from the Midwest living in Yellow House Canyon; the first semipermanent resident was a Mississippi sheepman, Zachary T. Williams, who came in the late 1870s. Only thirty-three people were counted in 1890, but a wave of settlers that summer and fall brought the total to about a hundred, many of them cattle raisers. In the 1890s drought and poor cattle prices pushed ranches such as the IOA to sell off land to farmers.
What the plaque says
The Free Range Era of Ranching Northwest Texas, 1878-1885 After Indians and buffalo were removed in 1870s, several hundred cattlemen with small herds came to rolling plains near site of later Lubbock, to graze free range. Vital natural water sources were found east of the Caprock, where springs and streams were fed from the Ogallala Formation of the High Plains. Here, with good years and rising prices, the free rangers prospered until 1884, when syndicates began purchasing land and enclosing large blocks with barbed wire. Free range men had to sell their herds to the syndicates or move farther west. The Spur Ranch alone acquired over 500,000 acres of land and bought cattle and brands from 37 of the free rangers. Similar ranches were developed by the Curry Comb, IOA, Jumbo, Long S, Magnolia, Matador, Pitchfork, Square and Compass, T Bar and Two Buckle interests. By 1885 all free range operations were transformed into large, enclosed ranches. Some free rangers exchanged cattle for stock in syndicates, others were employed by syndicates, and a few moved to Arizona, New Mexico or Wyoming. A few-- including the Edwards, Long and Slaughter Families-- acquired land and became sizable operators. 1970
Where it stands
33.59129, -101.88373 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- National Ranching Heritage Center — steps awayA Texas Tech outdoor museum where ranch houses, barns, windmills and a depot from across the ranching country were moved one by one onto a single park beside the campus.
- Lubbock Lake Landmark — 2.2 miA bend of Yellow House Draw on Lubbock's north edge where digging has found nearly 12,000 years of people on the Southern High Plains, layer on layer, from Clovis to the 1880s.
- Buddy Holly Center — 2.5 miThe city's museum of Buddy Holly and West Texas music in a 1928 railway depot, with the house where the Crickets worked on That'll Be the Day moved next door.
- American Windmill Museum — 3.5 miLubbock's park of restored water-pumping windmills and early wind chargers, more than 70 of them turning outdoors and the rare ones under roof, with a megawatt-era turbine overhead.