Buffalo Springs
Texline, Dallam County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Its permanent water made it known at opening of 17th century as a great hunting ground alive with buffalo and mustangs. A cow camp before 1878. Since 1882, headquarters of XIT Ranch, once largest fenced ranch in the world consisting of three mullion acres. Exchanged for the construction of the State Capitol. Erected by the State of Texas 1936 (1936)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Buffalo Springs' permanent water made it a famed hunting ground teeming with buffalo and mustangs, and a cow camp before 1878. From 1882 it served as headquarters of the legendary XIT Ranch—once the largest fenced ranch in the world at three million acres—land the state of Texas traded to a syndicate in exchange for building its granite Capitol in Austin.
Why it matters
The site anchors one of the great stories of the American West, where an entire empire of rangeland was bartered to raise a state's most iconic building.
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Related events
- · Construction of the Texas State Capitol
- · Founding of the XIT Ranch
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Heartland of Old XIT Ranch
Dalhart, TX
The XIT was one of the largest ranches on earth, born of an 1882 deal in which out-of-state investors led by Chicago's Farwell brothers built the massive Texas capitol in Austin and took three million acres of Panhandle land in payment. Fenced by some 6,000 miles of barbed wire and stretching 200 miles across ten counties, it saw its first herd delivered in 1885, when trail boss Abner Blocker scratched the famous "XIT" brand in the corral dust. Dalhart still honors the ranch's cowboys with the "empty saddle" monument, dedicated in 1940.
XIT General Office
Channing, TX
The legendary XIT Ranch sprawled across three million acres of the Texas Panhandle, land the state traded to investors in exchange for building its capitol in Austin. In 1898–99 the ranch raised this handsome general office in Channing, hauling in five railroad cars of brick and dressing it in Victorian detail — a wraparound porch, decorative eave brackets, and turned columns meant to impress visitors amid the open range. It ran the vast operation until 1912.
City of Dumas
Dumas, TX
In 1891 Louis Dumas and J.R. Wheat organized a townsite company on the high, dry plains of the Texas Panhandle and named the new community for Dumas himself. A post office arrived that year, county-seat status the next, and a bank by 1908—yet the arid land drew few settlers and the town stayed small. Everything changed when oil was discovered in 1927, transforming Dumas's fortunes almost overnight.
Site of Historic Drift Fence
Dumas, TX
Before the mid-1880s the Texas Panhandle had no range fences, so winter blizzards drove cattle south from Oklahoma, Colorado, and Kansas onto Texas ranges, mixing the herds and overgrazing the Canadian River breaks. To stop the costly spring separations, ranches like the Turkey Track, LX, and LIT joined to build a 200-mile, four-strand barbed-wire drift fence — until an 1889 state law against fencing public land forced most of it down by 1890.