Bucky’s home sits on one side of the square. Price: $725,000,000 Cowboying isn’t a profession, it’s a life, but if the Waggoner Ranch is broken up into pieces, that life will exist no more. He didn’t want to sell the ranch, but he thought it could be divided, that a line could be drawn on a map so that each side would have a separate but equal share. Roosevelt remembered later: “We broke into a lope a mile outside the limits, and by the time we struck the main street, the horses were on a run and we tore down like a whirlwind until we reached the train.”. From the ranch’s southwestern corner, at Davis Camp, a crow will fly nearly 50 miles to reach the northeastern boundary, at Whiteface. Yesterday a helicopter herded one hundred mother cows and their calves into a “trap”—a corner of the large pasture—and soon cowboys on horseback will be stripping the calves away from their mothers, herding them into separate pens and loading them onto trucks for transportation to other parts of the ranch. They communicate by written memos, even though their offices are separated by only a few feet. “He went on and on about how heartbroken he was and how much he missed them, but he didn’t write them. After a time everyone seemed in agreement on all except one point—maintenance of the dam at Santa Rosa Lake. Waggoner established for his children. No one, it seems, wants to witness the breakup of a mythic Texas ranch—except the Waggoner heirs. By the turn of the century, settlers were overrunning Indian reservations, and the open range was all but gone. Quanah saw his alliance with the Waggoners and other cattle barons as a way to better the lives of his people—and his own to boot. Shoulder to shoulder 22" Pit to pit 27 1/2" Top to bottom 35" Shoulder to cuff 25 3/4" First class priority shipping with tracking New Vintage Wrangler Shirt WAGGONER RANCH LOGO Mens XXL Pearl Snap Tan Chambray. This land sits atop the Seymour Aquifer, while the ranch itself is bone-dry. One side wants the ranch divided equally but otherwise left intact. Guy, who eventually settled on another ranch the family owned in New Mexico, married eight times. Hostile Comanches and Kiowas, plus a few foolhardy nesters trying to scratch out a living, occupied this endless stretch of grassland. Since Electra II’s death, in 2001, the board has been composed of these two men who rarely speak to each other. Before the day is done, we’ll spot hundreds of deer and numerous herds of feral hogs, fifty or sixty in a bunch, wee piglets scurrying to keep up. Baskerville has set a guideline price for the ranch at $725 million. In a January 2003 deposition, Gene said he sent Bucky his own draft of the map but never got a reply. 2253 County Line Rd. The ranch had its beginnings in the mid-1840s when Tennessee native Dan Waggoner and a 15-year-old black slave brought 242 Longhorn cattle and six horses to Wise County, near Decatur. All-night parties that started at Shadowlawn sometimes ended up on the ranch, after a trip by private railroad car, so that Eastern dandies could be treated to the sights of cowboys branding and castrating calves. Though he wouldn’t talk about the lawsuit, he spoke freely about his bewildering transformation from New Mexico schoolboy to co-owner of one of the country’s most famous ranches. The ranch is located in present day Decatur,Texas http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/apw01. They still talk here of Paul Whitley, an unmarried cowboy who in 1950 rode his horse to Cedar Top, the most remote camp on the ranch, and lived alone in a primitive cabin until his final illness, in 2002. discovered oil while trying to drill for water,” Hughes tells me. Our Brand, Your Land A Premium Full-Service Texas Farm and Ranch Brokerage If you would like for an agent to contact you about our Buyer Representation services, please input your contact information below. Waggoner, is a 50-percent shareholder. Founded by cowboy Dan Waggoner 165 years ago, it was expanded to its current size by his son, cattle baron W.T. He’d consult with him and get back to us. reclaimed all land and assets in 1923 and placed them in a so-called Massachusetts trust, a draconian arrangement in which he, as the trustee, controlled everything, including one of the biggest shallow oil fields in the world. In 1879, the Waggoners foiled rustlers by changing their brand from the D-71 to the now-legendary three reverse Ds. “Or you draw a line and I’ll take first pick.”. As he drew near and saw the house on the hill, he thought it “the most lonesome, desertedest place” he’d ever seen. When it is necessary for them to be in the same room, they let third parties do the talking. “I remember my mother taking me to Fort Worth to talk to her attorney.” Ahead was a legal battle over whether Buster had the right to dispose of property that Electra, his mother, had left in trust to him and his bloodline. Nowadays, the network of roads on the Waggoner is vastly improved, but the distances still stretch the imagination. They married in 1969. Fort Worth-based Jeremy Enlow was given exclusive access to the cowboys behind the prestigious reversed triple D brand of the Waggoner Ranch, the largest ranch in the United States under one fence. AFTER GUY DIED, E. PAUL AND BUSTER faced the issue of what would become of his shares in the Waggoner estate. As land was cleared for settlement, he gradually moved west and by the late 1870s settled along Beaver Creek near Electra Texas. He ended up using it for cattle dip, and the well became Electra’s city dump.”, Near the entrance to Zacaweista, once the home of the first Electra, we stop at the grave of Poco Bueno. took over operation of the property. “That’s where Electra Waggoner Biggs lived and where she kept her studio,” Hughes tells me. “In one, he wished Electra happy birthday and said, ‘I bought you a $2,500 bond.’”. A granite tombstone, set in the center of a small, neatly trimmed pasture, marks the grave of the greatest cutting horse of all time. As the frontier pushed westward, he expanded his herd and bought more land, in Clay and Wichita counties. A FULL MOON HANGS OVER WEST Diving Board Pasture. As their cattle business grew, the ranch needed more grazing land, especially as barbed wire began to close in the open range. Joe Roberson showed me how to read the books. Waggoner Ranch is a ranching company based out of P.O. “She finally pulled up in front of the Vernon drugstore, pieces of gate and fence hanging off the car,” Bucky tells me. An enormous picture window with a panoramic view of the ranch replaced the porthole-size window of 1910. As a consequence, the King Ranch scions moved comfortably in elite Texas social, political, and business circles, while the Waggoners never achieved the same degree of prominence. HOUCHRON CAPTION (07/27/2003): A calf is branded on the ranch in 1983. From the highway, its pastures seem timeless and impregnable. Some people believe that she would never have permitted the sale of the Waggoner Ranch. The three smaller, 85,000-acre parcels—Zacaweista, Four Corners, and Santa Rosa—were gifts to his three children, Electra, Guy, and E. Paul. Bickering and backstabbing have been a way of life in the family. It is as much a part of the legacy as horses, cattle, oil, opulent mansions, divorces, and drunken sprees. His most arresting feature is his green eyes, which are reminiscent of the luminous eyes that made his grandmother, the original Electra, such a commanding figure. Buster’s card room, on the second floor, which was once walled in leather, now has the original wood exposed. Fort Worth-based Jeremy Enlow was given exclusive access to the cowboys behind the prestigious reversed triple D brand of the Waggoner Ranch, the largest ranch in the United States under one fence. Neither the Willinghams nor the Whartons have the funds to buy the other out. One of the striking sights as you leave the ranch is the sudden appearance of enormous green fields of cotton, wheat, and alfalfa. At the same time, they amended the bylaws to allow either party to give “notice of termination” within certain windows of time—an amendment that would later prove crucial in the battle over the ranch. (Buck) Wharton III, great-grandson of W.T. To Bucky’s surprise, the Biggs family responded by filing suit, asking the court to liquidate the estate. He was a nineteen-year-old Army sergeant at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, when he learned that the lawsuits had been resolved and that he was heir to 50 percent of the W. T. Waggoner estate. Four years later, he dropped two of the Ds, but for years the Waggoner Ranch was best known as the Three D Ranch. “Be alert all the time and ready to go,” he says in a strong, sure voice. At every opportunity, Dan Waggoner purchased land. In 1947, legendary Waggoner Ranch camp man Paul Whitley loaded his bed on a packhorse, climbed on his saddle horse, and rode all day to Cedar Top, a remote camp near the center of the half-million-acre ranch. Fort Worth-based Jeremy Enlow was given exclusive access to the cowboys behind the prestigious reversed triple D brand of the Waggoner Ranch, the largest ranch in the United States under one fence. As the sun begins to crawl over the horizon, Hawley marvels at the endless prairie. On a slight rise behind this house is a much grander two-story Spanish-style villa with a red tile roof, a swimming pool, and a formal garden. He either didn’t care or didn’t notice that E. Paul’s clan—especially his socialite wife, Helen—considered Electra’s line of the family to be tainted and Buster to be an irresponsible spendthrift, and they were plotting for the day when they could force the Whartons out. As it turned out, he didn’t. The ranch is entrenched with history and offerings of this magnitude seldom come along. Says Willingham, “It is a sad part of our lives to sell the ranch; however, everything has its time, and the time now is to sell and move the ranch into a new era of ownership,” Willingham points out that “the ranch has been a big part our lives. When E. Paul drew Zacaweista instead, W.T. Abstract. Though it’s a nicer house, the Willinghams have never moved up there. and fellow cattle baron Burk Burnett sent their pet Indian to Washington, D.C., in 1905 to ride in President Theodore Roosevelt’s second inaugural parade—and to invite Roosevelt to go wolf hunting on the Big Pasture. Waggoner Ranch, Announces The Land Report, Stan Kroenke Approved As New Owner Of W.T. Either Guy’s two children would become their partners or E. Paul and Buster would have to buy them out. The stories you want, in one weekly newsletter. The cost of buying out Guy’s third of the estate had put a crimp in the flow of dividends, and Buster was running short of money. For several years there were no further attempts to settle. They ride the trails of their forebearers, living a life and practicing skills that have almost disappeared. “That would be a tragedy,” he says. E. Paul, a whiskey-drinking, poker-playing party animal, stayed married to his wife, Helen, for fifty years, but few people doubted the rumors that he kept mistresses in Mexico and South Texas. He owns a bank, an oil company, and a cattle company, but he is happiest when he is working outdoors or having dinner with his family. In 1879, the Waggoners foiled rustlers by changing their brand from the D-71 to the now-legendary three reverse Ds. It’s amazing how many people this place has touched. Waggoner Ranch, Announces The Land Report - news from Allwebsolutions.net. “She left the motor running, didn’t even bother to shut it off, and walked to the depot and took the next train out of town.” When Guy moved to New Mexico, Tony Hazelwood, who hated his guts, showed his disrespect by storing oats on the home’s prized hardwood floors. In 1869 Dan made seventeen-year-old W.T. W.T. The massive holding dates back to the mid-1800s, when a 26-year-old widower named Dan Waggoner moved his family to the Catlett Creek area of Wise County. The ranch went from large to vast after the Waggoners earned $55,000 selling longhorns on a Kansas cattle drive in 1870. Now look at it! Wharton and Willingham serve as co-directors of the Waggoner. The Waggoner Ranch is the largest contiguous ranch in the United States. declared a misdeal and had them draw again. Neither of her parents came to the wedding; biographer Porter reports that E. Paul and Helen were having marital problems. The dam was right on the dividing line. How could things have spun so wildly out of control? He pointed to an impenetrable thicket of mesquite and told me, “Thirty years ago we cleared that pasture, all the way to Beaver Creek. Waggoner. More than 36,000 of his images have been published worldwide. Don't have an account? It’s second only to the King Ranch in size, and second to none in its history of drink, divorce, and dissension. After dinner by the creek, Dan suggested that they all ride into Frederick, Oklahoma, personally setting the pace. That became the seed money for the Waggoner empire. More than 36,000 of his images have been published worldwide. Two years later, after buying an additional 200 head, Waggoner … The Waggoner Ranch was ordered liquidated. He secretly wanted his favorite, Electra, to draw Zacaweista, because it was nearest to his homestead. Another formula was used to calculate mineral rights, pipelines, cattle, horses, equipment, other assets. By all rights the Waggoner Ranch ought to be the equal of the King Ranch in Texas lore. Yet the Waggoner Ranch has outlasted its South Texas rival in one respect: It is still under the direct control of its founding family. Electra II married twice, the second time for keeps to John Biggs, a Texan who worked for International Paper Company, in New York, in 1943. This is a very rare shirt and will be hard to find another one. Traveling to the Four Corners line camp, where Guy Waggoner’s great home once stood, I tried to imagine that day in the twenties when Anne Burnett Waggoner, the fifth of Guy’s eight wives, decided she’d had enough. Waggoner Ranch enjoys a renown that somehow exceeds its endless fence line. It was notable for being the largest ranch under one fence in the United States. Otherwise, try again or reset your password. W.T. But Gene and Helen seem determined to do just that. Photo by Wyman Meinzer. Didn’t any of them have to work or suffer to get it. “It was in terrible condition,” Joline explained as she showed me through their home. By 1881, his ranch had reached its modern dimensions: half a million acres sprawling over six counties – the largest ranch in the United States under a single fence. Anne was the granddaughter of W.T.’s friend Burk Burnett and hardly the type to sit around waiting for a roving husband. In his entire life, he never drew a paycheck from anyone but the Waggoners. Nov 22, 2018 - Explore Robert Crank's board "Waggoner ranch hands" on Pinterest. Its absence symbolizes the fate of the Guy Waggoner clan in the history of the ranch. Waggoner Ranch is the largest parcel of land “under one fence” in the United States—more than 510,000 contiguous acres—encompassing a multi-generational family accomplishment yielding an empire of oil fields, open ranges, fertile farming, and endless miles of grazing land spread across six counties of Northwest Texas prairie and sweeping rangeland. Trace Cribbs. The little village of Lockett, where the descendants of those settlers now live, is wet in another way: It is the nearest spot where citizens of Vernon can buy beer and liquor. The answer lies in the rich and rowdy heritage of the Waggoner clan. Buster received income from his share of the estate, but he had no role in the ranch management and was happy to leave the ranching to E. Paul. The second Electra was, like her namesake, a globe-hopping socialite (she was once linked romantically to Cary Grant by Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons), but she also was an acclaimed artist, who knew all the celebrities of her day and sculpted busts of many of them. In a deposition filed with the court in 2001, Bucky acknowledged: “We do not meet face to face, just he and I. Brand new. That year’s cattle drive to Kansas netted D. Waggoner and Son more than $50,000. It’s like watching the death of a huge and magnificent animal: People can’t bear to look, yet they’re powerless to turn away. That’s what folks in Vernon, Electra, Seymour, and other towns near the Waggoner Ranch are asking as they watch one of Texas’s greatest ranching empires teeter on the brink of disintegration. Why do they fight on? The United States Department of Agriculture, as part of a conservation project, had surveyed every foot of ground on the ranch, and Roberson fed this information into a database. After Biggs fell ill with cancer in the early seventies, Moore was essentially running things, and the board—which then consisted of Electra II and Bucky—appointed him trustee after Biggs died, in 1975. Until today, the Waggoner Ranch has been under the same family ownership since 1849. Shortly before she ended her eighteen-year marriage to A.B., she purchased another magnificent home on Preston Road in Highland Park and named it Shadowlawn. Perhaps they are afraid of ghosts. Bucky looks more like a Little League coach than a cattle baron. Photo by Wyman Meinzer. The oil and gas potential of 400,000 acres has yet to be explored. “I’ll tell you one thing: Mrs. Biggs [Electra II] was the nicest person in the world to me,” said Jimmy Lee Smith, who cowboyed at the ranch for 38 years, rising from cowpuncher to foreman and ranch manager. Dan and W.T. Please sign me up to receive breaking news and updates from the Land Report! When we leave the ranch, it will be with heavy hearts that we say goodbye to our wonderful employees who are also our family.”, Says Wharton, “Hopefully, the buyer will keep it going. Two and a … After the Biggses requested liquidation, he hired Hughes and Roberson to draw a map, splitting the ranch in a way that would be acceptable to both sides. They ride for the Waggoner Ranch’s prestigious reversed triple D brand; the largest ranch within one … a full partner, gave him $12, a group of drovers, and fifty hard-used saddle horses, and sent him to Abilene, Kansas, with a herd of five thousand steers. Electra died in 1925 at the age of 43, her life and much of her fortune spent on extravagance. They almost killed him with kindness, literally. They were super, super people.” Nevertheless, Smith resigned in 1997, tired of being caught in the middle of the power struggle. The Waggoner has never allowed commercial hunting. He was teaching at Will Rogers Elementary School, in Houston, where Helen Biggs was also a teacher. Even the water in Beaver Creek was red—a sign, Bucky said, that it was fresh and contained no gypsum. There is also a rumor that the Willinghams have already bought a home in Fort Worth. “You get in here far enough, it just swallows you up,” Hughes tells me. Enlow is an advertising, media and fine arts photographer based in Fort Worth. The ranch’s famous reverse triple-D brand, for example, supposedly got that way when a blacksmith inadvertently read W.T.’s hand-drawn design upside down. And so they were, for a hundred years and more. W. T. Waggoner Ranch is located 13 miles south of Vernon, Texas with office headquarters in Vernon. “This is the job I set my sights on,” he says. More than 36,000 of his images have been published worldwide. L. Proctor was foreman when I got here, and I made him my model.”, The ranch has about thirty cowboys, many of them second- and third-generation Waggoner employees. “What does it take to be a good cowboy?” I ask. “I guess you could say it’s traumatic, but in two or three days the calves will forget they ever had mamas,” Weldon Hawley says in response to my city-boy question. Included in the sale are all permanent improvements, rolling stock, ranch equipment, oilfield equipment, cattle inventory, horse inventory, horse facilities, brands, intellectual property and the Waggoner Office Building in Vernon. Dan Waggoner acquired 15,000 acres in 1850 in Wise County, registering a brand for his longhorns that consisted of three backward-facing Ds. “Not a shred,” she told me. “The only time we don’t work,” Hawley tells me, “is when it’s raining and light-ning, or when it’s very hot. The 1905 hunt was a classic Waggoner production. IT’S A PERFECT OCTOBER MORNING, cool and crisp, and the ranch spreads out in every direction, 25 miles north to south, 30 miles east to west. In the meantime, the Waggoners had been buying out small farmers on the Texas side of the river, paying $1 an acre and often less. The Waggoner is home to countless traps, such as this one known as Red Jackson. Apparently they just agreed to continue to disagree. Now the great ranch is up for sale. His daddy worked this ranch for fifteen years, and Shane grew up on Cowboy Row. WAGGONER HAD BUILT A GREAT RANCH, but in 1909 he was 57 years old and thinking about its future. He built the newlyweds an eighteen-room mansion in Fort Worth, where he later built a twenty-story office building as the base for his empire. The land was used primarily to raise crops, beef cattle and horses as well as for oil production. Grayback is slightly east of Zacaweista Ranch, one of the three subranches W.T. One thing you don’t see on the ranch is windmills. “A good cowboy does what the foreman tells him and waits for his paycheck and for the sun to go down.”, Now the sun is going down on the Waggoner Ranch, perhaps forever. This was probably a bluff. They chose the latter. We were talking in Bucky’s office, a large corner suite on the second floor of the long, low W. T. Waggoner Estate Building just off the main highway in Vernon. A drought in the last part of the nineteenth century made the land where the Waggoner Ranch now sits nearly useless for growing crops. S. Middleton & Son in Lubbock as the brokers of record. But selling the ranch—or, worse still, permitting the court to liquidate it—would cost both sides dearly in taxes and prestige. We always meet with our employees present, and nothing is really handled.” They have quarreled over which wells to cap or abandon, over control of the corporate airplane, over the purchase of bulls and the size of cow herds. At least that’s what everyone outside the two families, their lawyers, and the judge believe happened. With the trust on the verge of expiring, Bucky and Electra II agreed to extend it until March 31, 2003. 54 of 60 55 of 60 Cowboys on the Waggoner Ranch brand calves in the spring of 1983. Gene’s got to drive within fifty feet of Bucky’s house every morning and again every evening to get to his own place. Waggoner had an eye for good horse flesh. So what does it all mean? “It’s a weird deal. The ranch amounted to over 500,000 acres by the time of the Great Depression in the United States. When they supplied them, he fumed. For years, its two feuding clans have agreed on only one thing: They want to break up their vast eight-hundred-square-mile spread and close this chapter of Texas history. The Waggoner Ranch Reversed D Brand is burned on the right hip of calves, and dates back to June 11, 1849. Enlow is an advertising, media and fine arts photographer based in Fort Worth. She left an enduring reputation and two children from the first of her three marriages: Tom Waggoner Wharton, who died of syphilis at age 25, eight-times married but childless, and A. The historic transaction will be the first-ever sale of the Waggoner Ranch, […]. She joined him in the apartment, and they set to work remodeling the Zacaweista mansion, which had sat vacant for nearly a dozen years. “Living on the ranch has been like living in a national park,” says Wharton. SOME PEOPLE THINK THAT THE LAST chance for a settlement died with Electra II. The entryway is glass, and there is a skylight over the vaulted ceiling above the staircase. For well over a century, cowmen have tipped their hats to the 3Ds. In the Roaring Twenties, Electra Waggoner was the most infamous socialite in Texas. Electra married A.B. That’s the only reason anyone would want to sell.”. The ranch is home to the Waggoner dynasty. Buster never liked cows; the only thing about the ranch he cared about was horses, especially his polo ponies. In 1875, Quanah Parker and his band of Quahada Comanches laid down their rifles and surrendered to the U.S. Army at Fort Sill. BUCKY WHARTON DIDN’T THINK OF THE RANCH as his heritage until he was in high school at Culver Military Academy, in Indiana. W.T. John and Electra had two daughters—a third Electra and Helen. The history of the land and the Waggoner family is so entwined with myth and legend that nobody can untangle the truth. Gene Willingham, son-in-law of Electra Waggoner Biggs, represents the remaining shareholders. In 1965 he replaced Tony Hazelwood as foreman. S. Electra, TX 76360. The letters were typed by his secretary,” Neely told me. Dan died in 1903, leaving everything to Tom. You can still see Buster’s polo fields across the road from the big house Electra had built, next to his landing strip, and the skeet- and trap-shooting range where he and his guests gunned down live pigeons.
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