LOCATION Brooks, Cameron, Hidalgo, Jim Hogg, Kenedy, Kleberg, Starr, and Willacy counties In addition to the revenue they’ve generated through traditional operations, the Marions have earned a few dollars a less likely way: In the sixties and seventies Marlboro featured the Four Sixes’ red-and-white barn in its cigarette ads, making the ranch noteworthy not only in Texas but also on Madison Avenue. Whatever the case, no one disputes the majesty of the Four Sixes, which is managed by Burnett’s great-granddaughter, 62-year-old Anne Winfohr Marion, and her husband, John, a former chairman of Sotheby’s. Yet Burnett himself denied the lively Wild West story, as do his ancestors, who say he bought the ranch from the Louisville Land and Cattle Company and named it after the brand already imprinted on his first herd: 6666. According to lore, Missouri cowman Burk Burnett won a ranch in a high-stakes card game and named it after his hand: the Four Sixes. SOMETIMES FICTION IS MORE ENTERTAINING THAN FACT. Today his grandchildren and great-grandchildren own and operate the family ranches. Over the years Jones and his wife, Louella Marsden, and their children added some 373,000 acres. But the son held firm, and in 1897, at age 39, he bought 6,000 acres in Jim Hogg County that were once part of the Las Animas Spanish land grant. had no other options: He was a graduate of Roanoke College in Virginia and the Draughn Business School in New York, and his father owned a thriving bank and mercantile store in Beeville he could have run either or both. And not only that: He was going to do it in an isolated, drought-prone, bandit-ridden section of South Texas. JONES WAS NOT AT ALL PLEASED WHEN HIS SON, William Whitby Jones, announced he was going to be a rancher. PRIMARY USE cattle, oil and gas, wild game huntingĬAPTAIN A. LOCATION Brooks, Jim Hogg, and Starr counties Today about a dozen of his descendants share ownership of the land. When O’Connor died in 1887, he left the ranch to his children, who left it to their children, and so on down the line. When that cow was mated with a Brahman bull in 1920, the result was Monkey, the famous deep-red bull calf that became the foundation for the Santa Gertrudis breed. In 1910 Tom’s grandson, also named Tom, gave Henrietta King and her son-in-law Robert Kleberg a hyper-healthy black half-bred Brahman-Shorthorn bull whose offspring produced a King Ranch cow. The family’s greatest achievement, however, may have been its indirect contribution to the development of the first breed of cattle produced in the U.S. And by the time he celebrated his twenty-eighth birthday, he had registered the TC brand. At seventeen he fought in the Battle of San Jacinto-the youngest Texan to do so. In 1834, at the ripe old age of fourteen, he arrived in Texas from Ireland. THOMAS O’CONNOR WASTED NO TIME MAKING HIS MARK in the New World. LOCATION Goliad, Refugio, and Victoria counties Electra and Buck have been feuding for the past decade and live in separate houses on the west side of the property. Today half of the Waggoner Ranch is owned by the estate of Waggoner’s granddaughter, 86-year-old Electra Waggoner Biggs, and her children and grandchildren the other half is owned by Electra’s cousin, 51-year-old Albert B. When Waggoner parceled out ownership of the ranch to his three children, he stipulated that it couldn’t be divided as a result, it has remained intact despite family discord. More than sixty years later, the Waggoner Ranch is still Texas’ largest piece of privately owned land, with 524,000 acres spread over six counties-all of it bordered by a single fence. “TOM” WAGGONER AND HIS FATHER started out leasing thousands of acres, at the time of his death in 1934 Waggoner owned the largest chunk of contiguous ranchland in the United States. LOCATION Archer, Baylor, Foard, Knox, Wichita, and Wilbarger countiesĪLTHOUGH W.
He also leases an additional 100,000 acres in Maverick and Cochran counties.įor more on Briscoe and his ranches, see “ Briscoe’s Bounty,”. Since then, he has more than tripled his holdings, making him Texas’ largest individual landowner. Now 75, Briscoe inherited 190,000 acres when his father, Dolph Briscoe, Sr., died in 1954. Not Dolph Briscoe, Jr., who was Texas’ governor from 1973 to 1979. THESE DAYS MOST TEXANS LUCKY ENOUGH TO inherit large ranches eventually downsize them. PRIMARY USE cow-calf, farming, Angora goats, oil and gas LOCATION Brewster, Culberson, Dimmit, La Salle, Maverick, McMullen, Uvalde, Webb, and Zavala counties
For more on the King Ranch, see “ When We Were Kings,”.
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