King Ranch Visitor Center

Richard King, a Rio Grande steamboat captain, camped on Santa Gertrudis Creek with Gideon Lewis in 1852 and in 1853 bought the Rincón de Santa Gertrudis, a Spanish grant of 15,500 acres, and then the Mexican grant called Santa Gertrudis de la Garza, 53,000 acres more. The ranch now covers about 825,000 acres in four divisions across six counties.

It was built by the people the ranch calls Los Kineños, the King's people. During a drought King bought every cow the hamlet of Cruillas in Tamaulipas had left; driving them north, the ranch's own account says, he saw he had taken the town's living, and he went back to offer the people food, shelter and wages to come and work for him. About a hundred men, women and children came. They were expert stockmen and horsemen, and their descendants still live and work on the ranch, in the part the tour calls the Colony.

The ranch is also known for its breeding. A bull calf named Monkey, born in 1920, five-eighths Shorthorn and three-eighths Brahman, founded the Santa Gertrudis, which the Department of Agriculture recognized in 1940 as the first beef breed developed in the United States. A ranch-bred horse, Assault, won the Triple Crown in 1946. The Running W was registered in 1869. Tours start where King first camped and pass the Kineño Colony, the commissary with its lookout tower and the house Henrietta King built in 1912. Private cars are not allowed.