The Historic LS

The LS began as one banker's initials. Lucien Scott of Leavenworth, Kansas, bought about 35,000 acres in Oldham and Hartley counties in December 1880, and the brand came to stand for the Lee-Scott Cattle Company when W. M. D. Lee joined him early in 1882. They also ran a Montana range on the Yellowstone from 1883 to 1888. Scott bred Herefords in Kansas; Lee in 1881 imported thirty-nine Angus, the first pastured west of the Mississippi. After the 1883 cowboy strike the LS hired Pat Garrett to lead a posse, the LS Rangers.

What the plaque says

The Historic LS (Headquarters 3 miles southeast) Great early ranch well known to badman Billy the Kid and other famed western characters. The LS was founded in 1870s by former Indian Territory trader W. M. D. Lee and New York financier Lucien Scott. Through Lee's efforts, the LS had water and grass for over 100,000 cattle and sometimes drove 6 or 7 herds a year up the trail. When thefts followed Billy the Kid's visits, LS men rode west and brought back their cattle; and when Tascosa gunfights put men into Boot Hill graves, the LS escaped disaster. But drouth brought heavy losses in 1886; and grant of 3,000,000 acres of panhandle lands to the XIT (State of Texas' payment for constructing Capitol in Austin) cut old LS range in half. Lee left in 1890 to promote a ship canal in Houston. Scott died 1893. W. H. Gray and E. F. Swift of Chicago bought LS in 1905. Memorable LS men included foreman J. E. McAlister, later a Channing merchant. One of the $25-a-month cowboys was E. L. Doheny, later a multi-millionaire oil man involved in 1920's Teapot Dome scandal. Ownership of brand and 96,000 acres of LS range passed to Col. C. T. Herring, rancher and civic leader of Amarillo; his estate still operates it. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Tascosa and the Julian Bivins Museum — 0.6 mi
  The 1884 stone courthouse of the Canadian River cowtown, later a ranch headquarters and the first home of Cal Farley's Boys Ranch, now a museum on the working campus.
• Magnolia Station, Vega — 22 mi
  A restored 1920s Magnolia filling station on Vega's Main Street, a barbershop after the pumps stopped in 1953, saved with a National Park Service grant.
• Window on the Plains Museum — 27 mi
  Moore County's free museum on the Dumas highway, telling an industrial Panhandle of zinc smelters, helium and gas plants alongside the farm and ranch rooms.
• Cadillac Ranch — 29 mi
  Ten 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.

More markers nearby

• Old Tascosa — steps away
• Oldham County — steps away
• Boot Hill Cemetery — 0.3 mi
• Tascosa — 0.6 mi