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Wild West Podcast
Exploring the XIT Ranch: Texas Panhandle’s Cattle Legacy, Historical Trails, and Environmental Challenges with Dr. Michael Miller
Dr. Michael Miller, a historian with a former career in technology, brings his expertise and passion for the American cattle industry to our latest episode. Discover how a chance encounter with rare historical documents led Dr. Miller down an unexpected path, exploring the history of the XIT Ranch and the Capital Freehold Land and Investment Company. We promise a journey into the complexities behind the cattle trailing that persisted into the 1890s, challenging the oversimplified narrative of the American frontier's closure in 1890.
We delve into the economic and social ripple effects of the XIT Cattle Ranch on the Texas Panhandle. From the substantial land deals orchestrated by the Capital Syndicate to the agricultural experimentation it spurred, we uncover how the ranch shaped regional development despite its struggles with water scarcity and the elusive search for oil. Dr. Miller's recounting of the critical reception of a book on this subject highlights the vivid storytelling that captures Texas's rich history.
Join us as we explore the enduring legacy of the XIT Ranch, from its origins as a state-funded project to its role in the evolution of cattle ranching practices. We discuss the environmental challenges of the West, past and present, including the historical overstocking that contributed to the Dust Bowl. As anticipation builds for the 150th anniversary conference of the Western Cattle Trail, Dr. Miller shares personal anecdotes that bring the history to life, promising an unforgettable portrayal of the legendary cowboys and the trails they traveled.
Today we are delighted to welcome Michael Miller. Born and raised in Montana, he spent 20 years in the technology business, primarily working with public and academic libraries, before returning to graduate school for his PhD, he studied the intertwined political economies of state and federal land policy during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Miller received the Montana Historical Society's James H Bradley Fellowship in 2013. He is the Western Writers Association's Spur Award winner for short nonfiction in 2016. Currently, dr Miller shares his knowledge and enthusiasm for teaching history at colleges and universities around the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. He and his spouse, a second-grade teacher, have resided in the colony, texas, for almost 33 years.
Speaker 1:Dr Miller, we're excited to have you join us for our show. The Western Cattle Trail Association has spent months putting together an outstanding lineup of presenters for the 150th anniversary of the Western Cattle Trail Conference. As a noted expert on the XIT Ranch, the Capital Syndicate and the American cattle industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, you will present the research topic the Last Cattle Drive. Can you tell our audience how you became interested in the topic of the Last Cattle Dri drives and why you decided to write a book on the XIT Ranch?
Speaker 2:Thanks, brad, for having me you pointed out in that great introduction. This isn't really my first career and probably some of those other folks at this conference are much more expert at some of this stuff than I am. I always wanted to write and I thought I was coming back for an advanced history degree and that had helped me build discipline skill. I kind of had a vague idea about studying and writing about homesteaders on the Northern Plains, montana specifically. You should have a topic in mind when you get there. Anyway, for one of my classes we went to the rare book room. The librarian there was asking everybody if they had any thoughts. Specific subjects she might help them find sources. Specific subjects she might help them find sources.
Speaker 2:I didn't really think they'd have a whole lot on homesteading in Montana, but I remembered stories from when I was young about a huge Texas ranch that ran thousands of cattle in Montana. I told this to the librarian. I couldn't really remember the name, though I told her it was something like the IXT, itx, something. Hold on, she told me and walked off to wherever the curators or rare books go off to. She was back soon enough and cradling a first edition copy of JEvitt Haley's 1929 edition of the XIT Ranch of Texas, the early days of Liano Estacado, probably the most famous book about the XIT. That's pretty much it for me.
Speaker 2:That spring I went on my first research adventure and pretty much spent the next 10 years or so studying the capital freehold land and investment companies. I was studying the capital freehold land and investment company, british owners of the XIT capital syndicates, the builders of the Texas capital and operators of the XIT ranch. The cattle drive, the last cattle drive those weren't really huge subjects at the top of my research list but it was fun and a big part of the story. They were part of the business operation the ranch and it was the business that I was really studying there, still working on that homestead story.
Speaker 1:Well, we look forward to reading and hearing how that one turns out as well. Me too reading and hearing how that one turns out as well, Me too. So contrary to the widely held notion that the cattle trail died around 1885, many Texas and Southwestern cattle operations continued to trail thousands of cattle to northern ranges in the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana and even Canada well into the 1890s. In fact, the Capital Freehold Land and Investment Company undertook its own trailing operation in 1890, shipping nearly 10,000 cattle to Wendover, Wyoming, and then driving the Beeves' almost all two-year-old steers onto the range the company acquired in Montana. What factors contributed to the continuation of cattle trailing well into the 1890s, despite the challenges of fencing, water and land which impacted the final cattle drives in the late 19th century? What were the main challenges faced during the last cattle drives in the late 19th century?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm pretty confident that there was really only one thing that kept the trail going into the 1890s. That was outrageous. Well, at least outrageous according to the cattle folks the outrageous shipping rates that railroads were charging. The syndicate folks were really tight with their money and looked to trim the bottom line everywhere, really. As to the challenges on the trail, well, that was pretty simple too. It was people, settlers, their fences, their crops, livestock. More people came year after year. That resistance to the trail herds became stricter For a while. Enterprising settlers, they figured out ways to charge trail crews for crossing fields, canals, grazing or watering, as one trail boss put it. Geez, I've paid everyone for every little thing until I'm broke Eventually. By the time of the last cattle drive, it was nearly impossible and almost foolish to try to get through was nearly impossible and almost foolish to try to get through.
Speaker 1:Now you as an educator might have something to say on this. I remember in my old high school history classes I don't want to date myself, I guess 30 years ago now I remember them teaching us that, according to the government definition of what constituted the frontier, frontier was closed by government mandate in 1890. And a lot of the American history classes that I had they were kind of pushing that as 1890 was just the end of the American Wild West, was just the end of the American Wild West, whereas stories like you present here show that that clearly wasn't true at all.
Speaker 2:Yes, of course, talking Census Department announcing, you know, the frontiers dead on it, frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis which guided history for nearly 100 years. I mean, in some cases people are still writing history that kind of follows Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis Right. But the other thing about that is that the closing of the frontier actually sort of launches the United States into the modern move towards acquiring territory outside of sort of these continental boundaries. I've read stories about these folks, you know people going up to Montana and Wyoming and North Dakota, and to a certain extent there's still wild and woolly behavior going into the 20th century. I'm not quite prepared to say the Wild West was dead at that time, but, as I demonstrate here, the trails didn't die in 1895.
Speaker 1:Right, the West keeps going even today. I think the West does keep going even today. Right, the West keeps going even today. I think.
Speaker 2:The West does keep going, even today. Interesting. Frederick Jackson Turner talked about this crucible of democracy and the Americans challenging the frontier as they drove across America on there, you know, and the settlement of America, the United States didn't really work that way. It kind of worked in from the West Coast and the East Coast, both towards the centers and the place I talk about, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, at least sometimes that really is kind of the last frontiers in there. There was a book about Montana, the Last Best Place. But the story I was going to mention was OC Cato who was the manager of the Montana operation. The XIT closed out up there in 1898, and he was kind of looking around for stuff to do. So he, along with a lot of people in just a two-, three-year period in there, went to Alaska for the gold rush I talk about often. The gold to the frontier didn't just expand west, it expanded north, it expanded east, it expanded across the ocean. That's the American way maybe.
Speaker 1:You've clearly done a broad spectrum of research into this. Let's get more into that if we could. So, according to the research that you have done and other historical documents that you're aware of, a fallout with the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad convinced the company to drive cattle from Texas in 1891, a practice the company continued until 1897. That year, top hand and trail boss, john McCandless, affectionately known as Scandalous, managed to push through nearly 2,500 head. This was the XIT's last trail herd and perhaps among the previous ones that had driven to Montana in that era. John McCandless was reported as saying about his last drive the water and land was all fenced. Mccandless reported no-transcript. How did the fallout with the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad influence the cattle trailing operations in 1891? And how did the XIT's ranch last trail herd compare to previous cattle drives in terms of scale and difficulty?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll answer a couple of things on that. Mccandless, which is him in the last trail drive, is what people kind of caught on for and I got invited to the conference for was to talk about the last trail drive and that's interesting. But they're just McCandless himself didn't put a whole lot and I don't want to give away any stories that I want to put out in Dodge City when I'm up there. But it's a pretty interesting story. I don't actually know if the XITs heard in 1897 was the last one that anybody actually took up. Mccandless himself reports that the very next year, in 1898, he took a herd to Rawlings, wyoming and that's just about all he says about that. He kind of leaves the ranching business after that and becomes a sheriff and a brand inspector on it.
Speaker 2:As far as the railroad in Fort Worth and Denver City boy, that's a really deep topic because in many ways the Capital Syndicate was in with Fort Worth and Denver City and officers of it, but Finley was George. Finley was the general manager of the capital syndicate, of any number of names, but the general business manager of the XIT Railroad to come up with a way to ship them up to Wendover as they decided that they were going to ship a number of cattle up to Montana and drive that for a little while, and so he negotiated a really good price it seemed to me, compared to other things that they looked at, and that was $55 a car for the cattle cars to take them up there and they'd load in Texas and eventually get up to Wendover which Wendover doesn't exist anymore Just kind of along the North Platte River. There you can still kind of visit the sites, nothing there. So that was good and he planned to, you know, make good headway by getting them to at least Southern Wyoming and then men take them on up to Montana. And it just took forever. And he became very irritated and I think in my book I've quoted a number of exchanges that he had with managers, shipping agents and those things from the Fort Worth and Denver City.
Speaker 2:Now they did manage to again, things were evolving. So in 1894, they were convinced to send what they call she-cattle or cows up to Montana. To send what they call she-cattle or cows up to Montana. And you know it's always talked about the breeding ranges being in Texas and the finishing ranges in Montana or other places on the northern plains. But they did start sending she-cattle up there and cows to begin a cow-calf operation, cows to begin a cow-calf operation, and that in fact continued on even when they closed out and they had more cows after they came back in 1902 on it.
Speaker 2:Where they shipped from in 1894, I don't know, I really don't. And by the time they decided to go back up in 1902, they came up with this crazy route along the eastern Great Plains and several different carriers to make their way up to North Dakota where they loaded all their beaves on a northern Pacific series of trains. It was 22,000 cattle in the end, so it was more than one train and that actually seemed almost more efficient than them shipping the 10,000 in 1890 over the Fort Worth and Denver.
Speaker 1:Chris Mano commenced his analysis of XIT a story of land capital in Texas and Montana on October 25, 2020, by suggesting that the book could aptly be subtitled as Mythbusters Texas Edition or Lonesome Dove Unplugged. He further expounded that this distinctive and comprehensive amalgamation of pivotal Texas history encompasses the panhandle literal turf wars, influential political dynamics. Literal turf wars, influential political dynamics, cattle barons, a contentious state capital building the emerging railroad, resilient cowboys and trail bosses, extensive thousand-mile cattle drives and more. This historical account can be succinctly summarized in one word captivating A narrative that will surely pique your interest. What were the economic and social impacts of the XIT Cattle Ranch on the Texas Panhandle region and how did the syndicate manage to maintain and operate such a vast cattle ranching operation?
Speaker 2:Well, I had to look up that particular review. That was like the very first one that came out. That was only days after the book had been released. Although I think Lone Star Literature is the website, they stayed pretty well on top of publications in Texas. But wow, what a great review. And somebody says captivating about your book and you're like, wow, what more could an author ask for? Yeah, the economic and social culture of the region. I mean, really, I'm what I call a cultural historian, I'm a business historian too, and so I was kind of looking at that and some of the things are just observations that I've made over time, personal observations that I didn't necessarily include in the book. But I think both economically and socially, the region is greatly shaped by the XIT as well as the other large branches that operated there. And although it took years for the syndicate to sell off their land actually I think the last of it sold in 1963.
Speaker 2:The earlier substantial sales to large branch interests is what began then getting out of it. Their ideas were to sell it to settlers, farmers, and the earliest sales and some of the largest sales went to these other big operations. But the syndicates themselves, as well as George Littlefield went to great lengths to try and encourage settlement people coming out. Companies settlement companies would bring carloads of people out to examine the lands and try to sell these things. They spent a lot of time what they called sectionalizing the land because when it was all surveyed the method in Texas was to use Spanish leagues to complete the survey in there. And then the Capital Syndicate, after they took over and they began wanting to sell settlers, they commenced this sectionalizing and sent other surveyors out to match what the Homestead Act had done with 640 acre sections, quarters and half sections on it in there. So that was going on Culturally well.
Speaker 2:Let me back up just a little bit about the XIT. When the XIT was still operating and how they encouraged people to come out there, they experimented extensively with agricultural production. I talk about some of that in the book. Grape production was one of the ones that cracked me up but as it turns out West Texas and the Panhandle is one of the biggest producers for grapes in the state. But they tried a lot of things they also. There was no oil found on the XIT. There was plenty in the Panhandle but they never had too much success in that.
Speaker 2:Water is always a problem up there, maybe throughout the Great Plains, but they developed an extensive network of wells, water wells and eventually, I suppose, small farms grew up in those areas that they sold off either to small settlers or even town builders in some cases to small settlers or even town builders. In some cases there wasn't a whole lot of success up there for farmers in the 20s and 30s Bad times in that part of the country. The government mitigated a lot of the issues from the Dust Bowl period and the panhandle stage is a huge comeback, I think in the 1950s High-powered industrial irrigation comes to it and they start putting out corn and cotton unimaginable and that kind of replaced the cattle business up there in a way. Now today kind of seeing a reversion to cattle. I mean people are beginning to understand that pleading any water source throughout most of the Great Plains it's the Oglala Aquifer and it just simply can't recharge at the rate that people have been using it. I don't really have any statistical evidence on it, I just from visual evidence when you go through those countries and you see people starting to change and maybe revert back to older days like the cattle days. Well, culturally it's hard to go anywhere along much of Texas's western border and all of those counties for about 200 miles along that New Mexico border and it's hard to go along there without coming across something that doesn't include XIT in its name. Another XIT ranch has returned to the region. I mean, I've seen other XIT ranchers even in Montana, but these people actually have come back to take over a portion that actually was one of the divisions of the XIT originally and that's Rideau Blanco Pastures Also and that's Rito Blanco Pastors Also.
Speaker 2:Every year Dalhart panhandles, northernmost county, near the XIT's famous Buffalo Springs Division Ranch, hosts a three-day celebration. They call it the XIT Days, but it began as a reunion of former cowhounds of the ranch, called XIT Reunion and Rodeo. I guess once all the cowboys died they couldn't really call it a reunion anymore, but it's still going on and it's probably one of the bigger things in that neck of the woods every year that people look forward to that. People look forward to the other part of that question, I guess how did the syndicate manage to maintain and operate such a vast cattle operation? Well, true thrifty businessmen founded the operation John Farwell, undoubtedly a business genius.
Speaker 2:George Finley once wrote Farwell describing a potential cattle deal. He was working with an old-style cowman, a fellow by the name of Seth Mabry, and this was when he was first looking into going to Montana. Finley said people described Mabry as sharp. I don't know that in that context he used it as a term that was meant to be complimentary, but from what I know on this whole subject, john Farwell was sharp too. The syndicate didn't always hire the best employees at first and even along the line. But when they got men that cared about their jobs and did them right people like George Finley, ag Boyce, oc Cato those fellas made the outfit operate successfully I guess successfully, right. Somebody made money off of it.
Speaker 1:Your book explores the history of the vast 3 million acre XIT ranch that was active in the Texas Panhandle from 1885 to 1912. In 1879, the Texas legislature designated 3 million acres of state land in the Texas Panhandle to finance the construction of a new state capitol building. No-transcript. The syndicate to sell the land to settlers for profit needed to spark initial demand for the land To generate income. While waiting for land sales, the syndicate set up the XIT Cattle Ranch. The book details this history from the commencement of the Capital Project through the entire operation of the Syndicate's cattle ranching, up to the conclusion of ranch operations and the final sale of the Syndicate land to settlers. Settlement and development of the Texas Panhandle. And what can the history of the XIT Cattle Ranch teach us about land development and management in the American West.
Speaker 2:Those are fairly complex questions as far as the first part of that long-term effects about the ranch itself but we have talked about the capital and the capital that these guys built in Austin, that beautiful red granite Capitol down there. That's the building that these fellows were responsible for building. State hasn't got a new Capitol since then and I think the state's pretty proud of that particular building. I think my answer to the previous question answers the first part of this. As far as the long-term effects, settlement development of the panhandle. The second part fairly complex, essentially the XIT and operations like it demonstrated what Charles Goodnight once said, that to make money in the cattle business you needed a lot of land and a lot of money. In this case it wasn't really easy to come by 3 million plus acres in the United States and by the beginning of the 20th century cattle ranching was evolving into much smaller operations for the most part and moving from the steer outfits to cow-calf operations. They became much more dependent on local feedlots and focused more on young cattle rather than, you know, finishing these four-year-old steers. Feedlots became more local and the slaughter and packing facility the big four, the main livestock operators created, were creating their own satellite operations closer to the smaller beef operation. I mean, that's how fort worth became cattle center. They got the slogan where the west begins their stockyards and plants and I think that was Armour that opened the first ones there Around 1901,. The cattle industry, the beef industry, has evolved continually, although I think the range business is making something of a comeback these days.
Speaker 2:As far as land management see some of the pictures of these denuded ranges from them placing thousands upon thousands of cattle in these places like the XIT were sending their cattle north was so overstocked. Texas and most of the panhandle all of the panhandle for that matter that they just didn't really have a choice, started going north then before any of that land really had a chance to recover. And that applies to Texas, to Colorado, to Wyoming, to Montana. I don't think the land really had a lot of time to recover before the homesteaders and farmers started coming in and the cowboys called, turned the ground upside down. That ultimately kind of brings one of the US's worst environmental catastrophes, the Dust Bowl.
Speaker 2:Government intervention helped to mitigate the damages for the plains from those New Deal programs and the successes. Industrial irrigation in the 50s once again brought a boom to the region but brought about new concerns. I mentioned the Ogallala Aquifer before. You just can't keep up with what people have demanded that the Great Plains provide, so that further antagonized the environmental concerns on the Great Plains of later development of ethanol products from corn, soybeans, similar crops like that, even virgin, or lands that had been removed from production after the Dust Bowl, that were part of you know, the government program to help out the farmers, as well as the land, have since been reopened for crop production, cattle, of course, feeding in hundreds of feedlots.
Speaker 2:They present their own environmental threat. I'm really sure most Americans really understand that threat and the threat that the US probably faces on climate change and resource depletion. Water was always a big concern of mine and should be a concern of people today. I don't really have any answers for solutions to any of that, but I see great challenges ahead for Americans and I guess that's what Americans do face challenges, and I guess that's what Americans do face challenges.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that water issue.
Speaker 2:That has been an issue of the American West since time immemorial. I guess it'll always continue to be until we completely run out.
Speaker 2:It's scary and you know we just give it away to Nestle and those places like that. So Texas, I mean, just doesn't realize what it's done and the salination that's going on in the West, along the Pecos and even along the Rio Grande, it's sad. And the depletion of the aquifers, the Edwards south of us, you know, feeding San Antonio and Austin, and green lawns and swimming pools and air conditioner Tough challenges we've got ahead.
Speaker 1:Is there anything else you'd like to add, dr Miller, as we bring this interview to a close, maybe an experience or two you've had in the past traveling along the Western Trail?
Speaker 2:Well, this kind of occurred to me when I first got into this. Studying this outfit was when I was a kid, much younger. I worked for Custom Harvester, a crew out of Edson, kansas in fact, and I worked for my uncle on a ranch in northeastern Montana a farm, ranch farm and they'd cut for him. And I thought, when I got 16, I thought, oh, that would be quite an adventure to go on. When I got 16, I thought, oh, that would be quite an adventure to go on. And so for three years I went with this crew where we'd start in Oklahoma and work our way north. And then one year I graduated from high school, I actually came down and did the corn harvest in Kansas and Colorado.
Speaker 2:But it occurred to me when I started on this project that really we were just following the Western Trail and I, you know I keep in touch with those guys.
Speaker 2:Every now and then Young folks have taken over and stuff, but they still kind of follow that trail and if you look at it you know, up through the western boundary of Oklahoma, up to Ford, kansas, which is pretty close to Dodge, garden City, colby, edson, where we were, burlington, colorado, ogallala, nebraska, alliance, nebraska, western North Dakota, eastern Montana.
Speaker 2:I remember one time we had gotten up to Northern Montana and I wanted to cut wheat in Canada. We were right on the boundary and there was a wheat field just across the boundary so I had to swing my header out and take a little bit of Canadian wheat from them. But those were good times and I never really thought of it at the time that we were like those cowboys, you know those kids that were going up the trail and they, the cowboys, didn't do it because they made a ton of money and lived a good life. They did live the good life, they loved what they did and that's why they did it. I kind of miss that Always, have kind of missed that too, but I guess you've got to move on.
Speaker 1:At the end of the day, it's all about the adventure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Thank you, dr Miller. We have covered a broad variety of topics here discussing the XIT. I really want to thank you for coming on and chatting with us and I look forward to meeting you in person and visiting you visiting with you, rather at the conference coming up next month.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. This is fun. I thank you guys a lot for setting this all up and look forward to seeing everybody and giving this little introduction, this little presentation and stuff and seeing what everybody else has to say. Sounds like great fun. Looking forward. And in Dodge City besides, where better?
Speaker 1:stuff and seeing what everybody else has to say Sounds like great fun Looking forward.
Speaker 2:Thank you, and in Dodge City besides.
Speaker 1:Where better Right? Get ready to saddle up for the 150th anniversary conference of the Western Cattle Trail. Mark your calendars for November 1st and 2nd 2024. Don't miss out on this historic event. Secure your seat now at westerncattletrailassociationcom slash conference dash info or contact us at wildwestpodcast at gmailcom to get your enrollment form. Hurry, the deadline to sign up is October 23rd 2024. Hurry, the deadline to sign up is October 23rd 2024. You won't want to miss the chance to hear Michael Miller's captivating presentation on the Last Cattle Drive.
Speaker 3:Join us for an unforgettable journey through history. I was out walking one morning for pleasure. I spied a cow puncher riding along. His hat was throwed back and his spurs was a jingling. As he approached, he was singing this song Whoop-a-tie-i-oh, get along, you little doggies. It's your misfortune and none of my own. Whoop-a-tie-i-oh, get along, you little doggies. You know that Wyoming will be your new home.