Site of Cator Buffalo Camp
Gruver, Hansford County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Established by James H. and Bob Cator in the spring of 1872 while hunting buffalo in the fall of 1875. The camp became a trading post known as Zulu. 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Brothers James and Bob Cator established this camp in 1872 while hunting buffalo on the Texas Panhandle plains. Over the next few years the site grew into a trading post known as Zulu, a small outpost of commerce in a raw and open country. It stands as a marker of the brief, intense era of the commercial buffalo hunt.
Why it matters
The camp recalls the buffalo-hunting frontier that opened the Panhandle to settlement while hastening the destruction of the great southern herds and the Plains way of life.
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Related people
- · James H. Cator
- · Bob Cator
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Old Zulu Stockade
Morse, TX
In 1873 the English-born hunters Jim and Bob Cator wintered a buffalo camp on the plains above the Canadian River, in what became the first permanent settlement of the Texas Panhandle. By 1875 it had grown into a two-room trading post stocked with groceries and ammunition—the first north of the Canadian—wryly named Zulu for the African warriors then in the news. As a depot on the Fort Dodge–Fort Bascom military road it served hunters, soldiers, and freighters until it was finally abandoned in 1912.
Old Farwell
Gruver, TX
Established in 1886, Old Farwell was meant to be the seat of Hansford County but lost the election to a rival town that has itself since vanished. It took its name from John V. Farwell and his family, Chicago department-store magnates who received three million acres, the vast XIT Ranch spread across ten Panhandle counties, as payment for building the Texas State Capitol. All that survives here are stones from the casing of a 200-foot well, dug by hand to bring water to a town now gone.
Hansford Cemetery
Spearman, TX
This was the first burial ground set aside in Hansford County, its earliest grave that of Mrs. Alfie P. Magee, wife of the first sheriff, in 1890. Among those interred are the Cator brothers, founders of the Zulu Stockade, and the Wright brothers, early ranchers of the Texas Panhandle. It served as the county's only official cemetery until 1928 and remains in use today.
Gruver Cemetery
Gruver, TX
In 1907, Joseph Hezkiah Gruver moved his family from Missouri to settle this stretch of the Texas Panhandle, and the town that grew around them took his name. A post office arrived in 1927 and businesses followed; two years later J.B. Dulin donated ten acres for what became Gruver Cemetery. The first burial, in March 1929, was Willie A. Winder, and the granite and marble headstones beneath the junipers now chronicle the community's history.