Turner-Davis Ranch Headquarters
Rocksprings, Edwards County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Located nineteen miles west of Rocksprings, the Turner-Davis Ranch Headquarters is a testimonial to the ranching way of life. Established in 1921, the ranch is located in the Edwards Plateau region. The rugged terrain is composed of limestone bedrock and thickets of oak, mesquite and cedar. Not an ideal place for farming, the area attracted ranchers specifically raising Angora goats for the mohair industry. J.R. “Ruby” Davis and his wife, Helen, owned and operated the ranch until 1941. Following WWII, Watt W. Turner and his wife, Elma Evans, bought the ranch from the Fred Cross Family who kept it operating through the war. The Turner Family and their heirs owned the ranch until 2003. The Headquarters’ main residence is a one-story structure made of wood with a steeply pitched metal roof first built in the early 1920s. The Headquarters’ buildings were built to last in pioneer style and were improved upon by each ranching family. In the 1950s, the Bracero program allowed Mexican workers to work on Texas ranches, and the Turner Ranch relied heavily on Mexican labor. After Watt Turner’s death, his brother, Clarence Turner, took over the ranch and kept the Headquarters’ buildings and miles of fencing in good condition. Carl Hyde leased the Ranch from the Turner estate in 1978 with renewed optimism for the mohair industry. He built a new house in 1979 on the Ranch for the foreman, Arnulfo Silva, and his family. The eight-section ranch operated for 82 years until it was sold to a developer in 2003 and subdivided. At one time, the Turner-Davis Ranch supported 6,000 head of livestock. (2014)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Established in 1921 on the rugged limestone country of the Edwards Plateau, the Turner-Davis Ranch raised Angora goats for the mohair industry that thrived in this hard-to-farm terrain. Owned first by Ruby and Helen Davis and later by the Turner family and their heirs, its pioneer-style headquarters were built to last and improved by each generation. The ranch relied heavily on Mexican labor, including workers brought through the Bracero program, before it was sold and subdivided in 2003 after 82 years.
Why it matters
It embodies the mohair-ranching way of life that defined the Texas Hill Country and the immigrant labor that sustained it.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Turner-Davis Ranch Headquarters sits about nineteen miles west of Rocksprings, in the rugged heart of the Edwards Plateau. This is limestone country — bedrock close to the surface, ground broken by thickets of oak, mesquite, and cedar — and it was never going to make anyone a farmer. What it could do was carry livestock, and that shaped everything about the place.
When the ranch was established in 1921, this hill country of West Texas had found its calling in a very particular animal: the Angora goat, raised for the long, silky fiber called mohair. On land too rough and dry for the plow, herds of Angoras could thrive on the brush and browse that other stock passed by, turning hard country into a working livelihood.
Texas would become the center of American mohair production, and ranches like this one were the reason. The story here is not of a single crop or a single boom, but of a way of life fitted precisely to a demanding landscape — and built to last through good years and lean ones alike.
People & events
The ranch's long life reads like a relay race run across more than eighty years. J.R. Ruby Davis and his wife, Helen, established the place in 1921 and ran it until 1941. Through the Second World War the Fred Cross family kept it operating — no small thing in years when labor and resources were stretched thin — before Watt W. Turner and his wife, Elma Evans, bought it after the war.
Under the Turners and their heirs the ranch stayed in the family for decades. When Watt Turner died, his brother Clarence Turner took over, and by the accounts preserved on the marker he was a careful steward, keeping the headquarters buildings and miles of fencing in good repair. In 1978 Carl Hyde leased the ranch from the Turner estate, betting on a renewed future for mohair, and in 1979 he built a new house on the place for the foreman, Arnulfo Silva, and his family.
The work of the ranch depended heavily on the hands who did it. In the 1950s the federal Bracero program brought Mexican workers to Texas ranches, and the Turner Ranch relied heavily on that labor. It is a detail worth pausing on: the mohair way of life celebrated here was sustained not only by the families who owned the land but by the workers — Mexican laborers among them — whose names and effort were woven into its daily running.
Its place in the American story
The Turner-Davis Ranch is a compact history of American ranching and the labor that powered it. At its height the eight-section spread carried some 6,000 head of livestock, a scale that speaks to just how productive this hard, brushy country could be when worked with skill and persistence.
Its headquarters embody a builder's ethic that runs deep in the West: structures raised in plain pioneer style, made to last, and improved by each successive family rather than torn down and replaced. The one-story wood main residence with its steeply pitched metal roof, first built in the early 1920s, is the kind of unpretentious, durable architecture that tells you these were people planning to stay.
And the ranch's reliance on Bracero-era labor connects this remote Texas hillside to a much larger national story. The Bracero program brought hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers to fields and ranches across the United States in the mid-twentieth century, and much of the country's agricultural output in those years rested on their shoulders. This one ranch, over its 82 working years, quietly held all of it: a landscape, an industry, several families, and the immigrant hands that made the whole enterprise run.
If you visit
This is remote, beautiful, and demanding country, and getting a feel for it is half the point. The land itself — nineteen miles west of Rocksprings, high on the Edwards Plateau — is the real exhibit: pale limestone underfoot, dense stands of oak, mesquite, and cedar, and the wide, dry light of West Texas over all of it.
As you take in the setting, picture the working life it once held: thousands of head of livestock spread across eight sections, Angora goats browsing the brush, and a headquarters that grew and was mended by one family after another for eighty years. This was the mohair way of life, and the terrain explains instantly why goats, not crops, made sense here.
Keep in mind that the ranch was sold to a developer in 2003 and subdivided, so its working days as a single great spread are behind it. Enjoy the landscape and the history from public roads and vantage points, respect private property and posted boundaries, and let the marker do what it was made to do — turn a stretch of rugged hill country into the story of the people, and the labor, that made a living from it.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · J.R. "Ruby" Davis
- · Helen Davis
- · Watt W. Turner
- · Elma Evans
- · Clarence Turner
- · Carl Hyde
- · Arnulfo Silva
Related events
- · Bracero program
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Edwards County
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Spread across the Edwards Plateau and dipping into the scenic Nueces Valley, Edwards County was created in 1858 and organized in 1883 from the old Bexar district, taking its name from early Texas colonizer Haden Edwards. Ranching built its economy, and it once styled itself the Angora goat capital of the world. The county seat moved to Rocksprings in 1891, whose courthouse survived a fire in 1897 and, in 1927, a devastating tornado that killed 72 people.
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