Pat Higgins Grass Farms
Sutherland Springs, Wilson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Pattillo “Pat” Higgins was born in 1910 in Houston to Pattillo “bud” Higgins, sr. And Annie Jahn Higgins. Bud owned oil properties in Chambers and Bexar Counties and, in 1925, began to purchase land in Sutherland Springs. After a short time at the University of Texas, Pat joined his dad on the Higgins Oil Leases. Continuing his father’s quest for oil, Pat began to drill in Sutherland Springs but, by 1937, he decided to try ranching instead. He purchased land and began to experiment with new forage grasses. In 1941, he consulted with the Wilson County Soil Conservation (C.S.C.) District and worked hard to grow grasses but was unsuccessful. Following six years of failure, in 1949, Pat and the C.S.C. learned to compact the soil and were finally successful. By late August 1949, all the grasses were dead except for one row of buffelgrass. Word began to spread about buffelgrass and, in the next eleven years, over 12,000 visitors were registered at the farm. Pat built a small runway for planes to accommodate visitors from Hawaii, France, Africa and Australia. A variety of native grasses were put into commercial production. Pat employed around 200 men and women to harvest grass seeds by hand prior to inventing a mechanical harvester he named the “bug catcher.” In 1957, Higgins earned the soil conservation award for irrigation water management. By 1958, Pat had 50 varieties and strains under observation. Before his death in 1961, Pat discovered the parent plant to buffelgrass and named it Higgins buffelgrass which produced higher yields and was more persistent. Buffelgrass became a mainstay on the famous King Ranch in Texas and the Parker Ranch in Hawaii. Higgins became known as the “Grass King of the Southwest.”
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Son of an oil-prospecting family, Pat Higgins turned from drilling to ranching in the 1930s and set out to solve the problem of poor forage on Texas rangeland. After six years of failure, he and the local soil conservation district learned in 1949 to compact the soil, and a single surviving row of buffelgrass pointed the way forward. Word spread worldwide; more than twelve thousand visitors came, and Higgins — the self-styled "Grass King of the Southwest" — even invented a mechanical seed harvester before his death in 1961.
Why it matters
His stubborn experiments introduced grasses that transformed ranching from the King Ranch to Hawaii, a quiet agricultural revolution born on a small Texas farm.
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Related people
- · Pattillo "Pat" Higgins
- · Pattillo "Bud" Higgins, Sr.
Themes & tags
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