Two-Buckle Ranch Headquarters, Kentucky Cattle Raising Company
Crosbyton, Crosby County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Headquarters for the Two Buckle Ranch was built near this site, at Silver Falls in 1884 by the Kentucky Cattle Raising Company, which had been founded two years earlier by a group of Louisville, Kentucky distillers. Claude Tilford was hired by the company to manage the 145, 240-acre ranch. A variety of grain and hay crops were grown. The ranch's cattle operation featured cross breeding and separation of breeding stock. In 1901 the C.B. Livestock Company bought 90,000 acres of the land and used the established headquarters for its -N- Ranching and plains land development operations. A dipping vat was built in 1912 and was used by all area cattlemen to combat Texas cattle fever. Since the 1915 breakup of the C.B. Livestock Company, succeeding owners have continued to add to and preserve the original headquarters site. A barn, garage, concrete storage tank, as well as a dam across White River were added during the 1920s. Over the years, this land has been home for a number of families who have contributed to Crosby County's ranching heritage. The Two Buckle Ranch Headquarters is a historic member of this early West Texas Industry. 1984
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1884 a group of Louisville distillers, organized as the Kentucky Cattle Raising Company, built the headquarters of their vast Two Buckle Ranch near Silver Falls, spreading cattle and crops across some 145,000 acres of West Texas. Under managers who experimented with cross-breeding, the operation passed in 1901 to the C. B. Livestock Company and later owners, who added barns, tanks, and a dam over the decades. The headquarters site has been preserved as a living record of the region's ranching heritage.
Why it matters
Great absentee-owned ranches like this one show how outside capital and industrial-scale cattle raising transformed the open plains of West Texas.
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Related people
- · Claude Tilford
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Work Building
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The C.B. Livestock Company carved the Crosbyton townsite out of its -N- range land in 1908, and this building rose in 1910 from concrete blocks cast in a dugout just a block away. It opened as the town's first meat market and has stayed in continuous use ever since. It is a modest survivor from the moment a West Texas ranch became a town.
Lamar Building
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This site first held the Crosbyton Inn, a two-story frame hotel built in 1908 by the C.B. Livestock Company to lure land buyers and promote the region for cotton farming. A magnet for travelers on the South Plains, it was rebuilt over its original basement after an early fire and finally razed in the 1920s. In 1926 a brick office and apartment block rose in its place, later bought and renamed for W. P. Lamar in 1944.
McNeill Ranch
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In 1882 Brazoria County rancher James Calvin McNeill bought 8,000 acres in Crosby County to grow his cattle operation, later expanding it to more than 18,000 acres. Managing two far-flung ranches proved hard, so in 1890 his cousin George M. Williamson arrived to help, and in 1902 his son James Calvin McNeill Jr. took the reins. When the elder McNeill divided the property among his children in 1930, the ranch had already become a fixture of the region's cattle country.
Espuela
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Espuela began in 1870 with J.H. Parrish's dugout store on Duck Creek, serving travelers, buffalo hunters, and cattlemen as the last Native tribes left the region in 1876. The vast Espuela Land & Cattle Company soon fenced more than half a million acres, and the town it anchored grew into the county's largest, becoming the first seat of Dickens County. After losing the county seat to Dickens in 1892 and the railroad-era shift to nearby Spur, the town faded—today only its cemetery remains.