Woody-Kutch Livestock Commission Company

A commission company never owned the cattle it sold. Ranchers and farmers shipped livestock to the yards, and a commission man arranged the sale to a packing house or another buyer and took a commission on it. After Swift and Armour opened their Fort Worth plants in 1903, the Texas Trail of Fame says, cattlemen came to trust the market's financial standing, and within a year twelve commission firms were operating. At the peak more than two dozen worked the yards, many headed by prominent Texas livestock leaders.

What the plaque says

Woody-Kutch Livestock Commission Company In 1920, brothers-in-law Joseph Casner Woody (1880-1950) and Jefferson Davis Kutch, Jr. (1890-1990) were both active in the Fort Worth Stock Yards Company, a central buying location for regional cattle and sheep ranchers and hog farmers. They incorporated the Woody-Kutch Livestock Commission Company of North Fort Worth in 1923, with Woody as president and Kutch as vice president. Their office in the Livestock Exchange Building was a clearinghouse to process receipts of sales. For all its activity and volume of business, the building which housed 48 livestock commission companies was known as the "Wall Street of the West." After Woody's death, Kutch and J.D. Farmer started Farmer-Kutch Livestock Commission Company, which operated until 1981. (2019)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Worth Stockyards — steps away
  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.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 2.4 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 — 3.0 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 — 3.5 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.

More markers nearby

• Fort Worth Stock Yards Company — steps away
• Fort Worth Stockyards Horse and Mule Barns — steps away
• Fort Worth Stockyards Hog and Sheep Markets — steps away
• Coliseum — steps away