Gregg Ranch
Denton, Denton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Darius Gregg (1804-70), who came to Texas from Tennessee in 1827, and fought in the Texas War for Independence, accumulated about 20,000 acres in this area in the early 1850s. Gregg, a surveyor and Houston Realtor, spent several summers here before his death. His son, William Bowen Gregg (1849-89), moved from Houston and operated the ranch in 1870s and early 1880s. Notorious outlaw Sam Bass worked on the ranch, and a frequent summer visitor was Robert Swift, of the well known meat packing family. Of the original ranch, 750 acres are still owned by a Gregg heir. (1973)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Darius Gregg came to Texas from Tennessee in 1827 and fought in the war for independence before amassing some 20,000 acres across this part of North Texas in the early 1850s. A surveyor and Houston realtor, he summered on the land his son later ranched through the 1870s and '80s. The ranch drew a colorful cast—among its hands was the notorious outlaw Sam Bass, and among its summer guests a member of the Swift meatpacking family—and a portion remains in Gregg descendants' hands to this day.
Why it matters
Gregg Ranch links the founding generation of the Texas Republic to the wide-open cattle country of the frontier, complete with the outlaws who haunted its edges.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Darius Gregg
- · William Bowen Gregg
- · Sam Bass
Related events
- · Texas War for Independence
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Plainview Cemetery
Krum, TX
Plainview Cemetery grew out of a farming community in western Denton County founded around 1878 by the Kimbrough families, newly arrived from Tennessee. A one-room school gave way to a Baptist Sunday school and, in 1896, a church; two years later a neighboring plot became the cemetery, its first burial the very man whose estate sold the land. Burials spiked in the early 1900s during a national influenza epidemic, and today the graveyard and church are the last remnants of a once-thriving farm community.
City of Krum
Krum, TX
Krum grew from an 1876 pioneer settlement known as the Jackson community into a proper town in 1886, when the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railway bought land and named the station for railroad official Charles K. Krum. Stores, churches, and a post office quickly followed, but it was the region's rich soil that made Krum famous, drawing renown as one of the largest inland grain markets of the early 1900s. Local wheat even won the grand prize for 'Rainbow Flour' at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.
Ponder
Ponder, TX
Settlers drawn by rich farmland began arriving in western Denton County in the 1850s, among them Silas Christal, who built an ox-driven gristmill and, in 1880, a school. When the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railway pushed a line toward Indian Territory in 1886, a town sprang up and was renamed Ponder for a prominent local landowner. Churches, stores, a cotton gin, and a bank clustered around the depot, and community traditions like the Ponder rodeo, begun in 1939, have carried the small town's spirit forward.
Forester Ranch
Sanger, TX
William S. Forester drove his family from Tennessee to the Denton County frontier in the early 1850s and carved out a ranch on open range still contested with Native peoples, a danger that cost his teenage son Sol his life while herding cattle. His son Lock, a Confederate veteran, expanded the spread past 6,000 acres and made its "Two I Jinglebob" brand well known, before a third generation carried the ranch into the twentieth century. For over a century the Forester Ranch shaped the cattle country of North Texas.