First Cemetery in Potter County
Amarillo, Potter County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On the old _X (LX), first ranch in Potter County, established in 1877 by W.H. Bates and D.T. Beals, Boston (Mass.) industrialists. The earliest burials occurred after the LX was sold, 1884, to American Pastoral Land and Cattle Company, a British syndicate. First grave was dug for the LX bookkeeper's wife, Mrs. James Wyness, who died in Tascosa on June 15, 1887; six weeks later the newborn son who survived was laid at her side. The infant son of Mr. and Mrs. Charley Mott died in 1888. Second adult buried here was P.O. ("Bunch") McCrary killed 1890 when his horse fell on him while he was roping a yearling. In 1893 James Bailey, hauling grain from Amarillo, bogged in quicksand in the Canadian; in getting his wagon out, he suffered exposure that brought on a fatal case of pneumonia. A 1902 grave was for James Bell, found dead in a corral with a bridle in his hand. When the syndicate was liquidated, this portion of the ranch was purchased by an early cattleman, R.B. Masterson. John Arnot, one of the original employees of the syndicate, and later a U.S. government cattle brands inspector, maintained the cemetery until 1945. It is now cared for by Mrs. Mary Masterson Fain, a descendant of third owner of the old ranch land. (1967)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This cemetery sits on the old LX Ranch, the first ranch in Potter County, founded in 1877 by two Boston industrialists and later sold to a British cattle syndicate. Its graves read like a chronicle of the open range: a bookkeeper's wife who died in Tascosa in 1887, ranch children, and cowboys killed by falling horses, quicksand, and hard weather. After the syndicate was liquidated, a former employee tended the plots for decades until a descendant of the ranch took up the care.
Why it matters
Every headstone here records the human cost and international money behind the great cattle era that opened the Texas Panhandle.
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Related people
- · W.H. Bates
- · D.T. Beals
- · R.B. Masterson
- · John Arnot
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Canadian River
Amarillo, TX
For more than twelve thousand years the Canadian River served as a travel corridor and home, supporting stone and adobe Native villages between the 12th and 14th centuries. It was among the first interior rivers known to European explorers: Coronado crossed it in 1541 hunting the fabled Quivira, Oñate followed in 1601, French traders came in the 1700s, and by the 1840s it guided Santa Fe traders and California gold seekers under military escort. Even its disputed name carries this layered past.
Great Spanish Road_First Ranch in Potter County_First Store in Potter County
Amarillo, TX
This spot along the Canadian River sits near the Great Spanish Road, a route traders from Santa Fe used as early as the Revolutionary era and that Pedro Vial was commissioned to formalize in 1786 to link Santa Fe with San Antonio and East Texas. Nearby, the LX Ranch was established in 1877 by northern investors—once employing a young cowboy named Will Rogers—and Potter County's first store opened in 1878. Together the sites mark the layers of Spanish, ranching, and frontier commerce that crossed the Panhandle.
The United States Topographical Engineers in the High Plains of Texas
Amarillo, TX
Between 1838 and 1863 the small U.S. Army Topographical Corps—never more than 36 officers—mapped vast stretches of the American West, often through country held by peoples resisting their advance. Armed with barometer, compass, sextant, and pencil, they recorded climate, terrain, soils, and possible wagon and railroad routes. Three parties surveyed the future Potter County: Lt. James W. Abert along the Canadian River in 1845, Lt. James H. Simpson on a Fort Smith-to-Santa Fe rail route in 1849, and Lt. Amiel W. Whipple mapping a Mississippi-to-Pacific line in 1853.
The _X (LX) First Ranch in Potter County
Amarillo, TX
Established in 1877 by Colorado merchants W. H. Bates and D. T. Beals, the LX was one of the great open-range cattle operations of the Texas Panhandle, spreading across roughly 1,000 square miles between present-day Dumas and Amarillo. LX cattle were trailed north to Dodge City and on to the newly opened ranges of Montana and Wyoming as the buffalo vanished. A British firm bought the ranch in 1884, and when Potter County organized in 1887, the 38 LX cowboys voted to make Amarillo the county seat. Among its hands was Charles Siringo, later famous as a cowboy author and detective.