Texas Cowboy Reunion Oldtimers' Association
Stamford, Jones County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded 1930, jointly with Texas Cowboy Reunion - to "hand down to posterity, customs and traditions" of early cattle people who lived in dugouts and fought drouths, die-outs, heat and freeze-ups, raising the longhorns that finally brought settlement to the southwest. Here (1930) were 335 men who had been cowboys prior to 1895. Besides regular cowmen, early members included musician Paul Whiteman, editor Amon Carter, Ranger Captain Tom Hickman and Will Rogers, ex-cowhand, internationally famous entertainer and columnist. Colonel R. L. Penick was first president. In 1932, donation of a bull started building fund for bunkhouse and roundup hall standing nearby. Ranch donated site. The interior and exterior of the bunkhouse feature ranch brands of many members. Oldtimers' Reunion and Rodeo held 3 days annually (including July 4th) features chuckwagon meals, square dancing, and oldtimers' memories and songs. Town celebrates with cowboy parade and thousands come to see what is called "world's largest amateur cowboy show," with actual cowhands performing. These oldtimers represent the end of the open range and beginning of the era of barbed wire. They opened Texas' last frontier. (1969)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1930 alongside the Texas Cowboy Reunion, this association gathered aging cowhands—335 of them who had worked the range before 1895—to preserve the customs of the people who raised longhorns and endured droughts and freezes on the open range. Its early ranks even included Will Rogers, publisher Amon Carter, and bandleader Paul Whiteman. A donated bull funded a bunkhouse and roundup hall, and the annual reunion still features chuckwagon meals, square dancing, and what's billed as the world's largest amateur cowboy show.
Why it matters
These oldtimers embodied the passing of the open range and the coming of barbed wire—the closing of Texas's last frontier.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By 1930, the old open-range cattle era was fading into memory. For decades after the Civil War, Texas cowboys had driven longhorns across unfenced country, following grass and water through drought and bitter cold. Then barbed wire, railroads, and settled ranching closed the open range, and the life those cowhands had known became something to remember rather than live.
The men who had lived it were growing old, and the country was changing fast around them. The Great Depression was beginning, cities and automobiles were remaking American life, and the frontier had already become the stuff of movies and dime novels. For the real cowboys, the risk was that their story would be told only by people who had never lived it.
In West Texas around Stamford, ranching was still a way of life. It made sense that a gathering meant to honor the old-time cowhands and preserve their customs would start here, in the country where much of that history had played out.
People & events
The Oldtimers' Association was founded in 1930 alongside the Texas Cowboy Reunion. Its purpose was to pass on the customs and traditions of the early cattle people, who lived in dugouts and endured drought, die-offs, heat, and freezing weather while raising the longhorns that opened the Southwest to settlement. That first year, 335 men who had worked as cowboys before 1895 gathered here.
The membership mixed working cowmen with some famous names. Will Rogers, a former cowhand who became an internationally famous entertainer and columnist, belonged. So did newspaper editor Amon Carter, bandleader Paul Whiteman, and Texas Ranger Captain Tom Hickman. Colonel R. L. Penick served as the first president.
The group built with the resources of ranch country. In 1932 someone donated a bull to start a building fund, a ranch donated the site, and the result was the bunkhouse and roundup hall that stand nearby. Members' ranch brands decorate the bunkhouse inside and out, each one a signature of a family and an outfit. The reunion itself grew into an annual three-day celebration that includes the Fourth of July.
Its place in the American story
The cowboy is among America's most powerful national symbols, and the real history behind the legend belongs to the cattle country of Texas and the Southwest. The Oldtimers' Association set out to keep that history honest by gathering the people who had actually lived it before their memories disappeared.
The marker makes a large claim: these men stood at the end of the open range and the start of the barbed-wire era, and they opened Texas's last frontier. That shift, from unfenced grazing to fenced, settled ranching, was one of the defining changes in the late-nineteenth-century West. It reshaped how land was owned, worked, and lived on.
Will Rogers among the members shows how the cowboy's world connected to a national audience. Rogers carried his ranch-hand roots onto the stage and into the newspapers, helping turn the working cowboy into a figure the whole country recognized. In Stamford, the famous and the everyday cowhand sat at the same table.
If you visit
Look for the bunkhouse and roundup hall. Their best feature is the ranch brands on the walls inside and out. Each brand stands for a member and an outfit, and together they work like a guest book of old West Texas ranching. Take your time with them.
If your travel plans allow, the annual reunion around the Fourth of July is the most lively time to come. The marker describes chuckwagon meals, square dancing, old-timers' songs and stories, a cowboy parade, and what it calls the "world's largest amateur cowboy show," with working cowhands doing the performing. Check current event details before you go.
Stamford is a good stop on a road trip through the ranch country of West Texas. It's a place to see the cowboy not as a Hollywood character but as a working tradition that local people have carefully kept alive for generations.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Will Rogers
- · Amon Carter
- · R. L. Penick
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Stamford
Stamford, TX
Stamford was born in 1899 when the Swenson brothers, sons of Swedish immigrant Swante Magnus Swenson of the famed SMS ranches, donated land for a townsite along an extension of the Texas Central Railway. Railroad president Henry McHarg named it for his Connecticut hometown. With a boxcar post office, a bank, gins, a flour mill, and a foundry, the cotton-and-cattle town incorporated in 1901 and thrived through the 20th century, boosted by a 1935 oil strike and a World War II training field nearby.
Swenson Ranch Commissary
Stamford, TX
Around 1900, the Texas Central Railroad and the SMS Ranch teamed up to create the town of Stamford, and this stout Lueders-stone building rose beside the tracks to serve it. It was the central supply depot for the four sprawling Swenson ranches of west Texas — Tongue River, Spur, Throckmorton and Flat Top. Goods came off the trains and waited here until ranch foremen rode into town to collect provisions and swap news.
Swenson Land and Cattle Company Headquarters
Stamford, TX
Swen Magnus Swenson, the first Swedish settler in Texas and an ally of Sam Houston, began buying vast West Texas tracts here in 1854. His sons built the operation into the SMS Ranches, running shorthorn and Hereford cattle under a distinctive reversed-S brand that is still used today. Incorporated in 1926 and headquartered here from 1927, the company grew to more than 500,000 acres and pioneered innovations like a mail-order cattle system before splitting into four family corporations in 1978.
Rath City
Aspermont, TX
During the buffalo-hide boom of the 1870s, Charles Rath founded this trading town in 1876 and opened a mercantile store to supply hunters and buy their skins. At its peak in 1877, an astonishing 1,100,000 hides were piled at his post, and the rough camp—also called Reynolds City—grew a corral, saloon, restaurant, and a lookout tower to watch for raids. When the buffalo were gone by 1879, the town vanished with them.