by Sue Hancock Jones
Located in northern Texas in the wide-open spaces south of Vernon, the 171-year-old Waggoner Ranch is touted to be as large as New York and Los Angeles combined. Most people accept that statement as a fact rather than calculate the acreage. Why? Because one thing is sure: The Waggoner Ranch is big.
The Texas ranch is the legitimate owner of amazing facts such as being the fourth-largest ranch in the nation and the second-largest in Texas behind the King Ranch, which is the largest in the nation. Considering that America has more than an estimated 700,000 ranches, the statistics are impressive.
Most ranchers and fans of cowboy culture have thought of the Waggoner Ranch as the nation’s largest ranch within the confines of a single fence, but that distinction may now be in jeopardy unless the record keepers want to make a contrast between a working ranch and a conservation ranch.
The Waggoner Ranch is the fourth-largest ranch in the country and the second-largest ranch in Texas.
Vermejo Park Ranch in northern New Mexico spans 591,000 acres and was acquired in 1996 by Ted Turner. While the Waggoner Ranch has remained a working ranch, Vermejo is a conservation ranch. Turner purchased the ranch with a mission to transform it into a sanctuary for wildlife and endangered species. Visitors can enjoy a variety of outdoor activities and have lodging options.
Despite the King Ranch being the largest ranch in America and Texas, the Waggoner can always shine as the largest ranch in Texas within a single fence.
Real estate and sports billionaire Stan Kroenke and his wife Ann, an heiress to the Walmart fortune, purchased the Waggoner Ranch in 2016 for an estimated $720 million. The original acreage at the time of the sale was 510,527 acres but additional acreage boosted the figure to 535,000 acres.
When The Land Report recently announced its top 20 U.S. landowners in 2024, Kroenke (Kroenke Ranches of Bozeman, Mont.) was the fourth-largest landowner with extensive land holdings in three states. The Land Report listed his Waggoner Ranch as 560,000 acres.
After the Sale
“Kroenke Ranches is taking bold new steps on the Waggoner Ranch by adopting a holistic approach to the ecological management of the wildlife resources on the historic ranch,” explained Eric O’Keefe, editor of The Land Report.
“The primary land-management techniques being employed by the Wildlife Division are targeted specifically at quail and white-tailed deer habitats,” he said. “Since Stan Kroenke purchased the ranch in February 2016, brush management has been performed on more than 150,000 acres of the 875-square-mile landholding.
“This comprehensive management philosophy has served to promote populations of native grasses and forbs and to enhance habitat diversity on the largest single ranch under one fence in the Lone Star State.”
The Waggoner Ranch historically has been divided into four divisions with a varying number of camps equipped with a manager’s house, outbuildings and pens. Each camp manager operates his specific unit, but all the managers and cowboys work together during spring branding and shipping. Each camp ranges in size from more than 20,000 acres to nearly 40,000 acres.
Historically the ranch was divided into four divisions with Waggoner family members living in two of those divisions. The ranch has multiple camps or division units with a manager’s house, outbuildings and pens located at each camp. | Photo by Wyman Meinzer.
When the Waggoner family decided to sell the ranch, surrounding communities that rely heavily on the ranch for work as cowboys, ranch hands or oil workers were concerned about a negative impact. The bunkhouse and cook shack closed after the sale of the ranch and about one-third of the Waggoner cowboys either retired or were let go. The ranch still operates with about 100 employees and little change has existed in the day-to-day lives of those who depend on the ranch.
One major squabble developed regarding Lake Kemp and Lake Diversion, both of which are within the boundaries of the ranch. Several hundred families had leased land year-to-year for decades on the shorelines of the lakes. Assuming nothing would change, they built houses, landscaped their homes and raised their families on the shoreline.
Letters went out to these families advising them that the lease program would be ending and they had five months to evacuate their homes. The new owner wanted to let the lake shoreline return to its natural, uninhabited state to improve the ecosystem. Recreational access to one of the lakes is still available to the public for a fee.
Oil and Cattle Fuel Income
The Waggoner family dug for water in 1902 and got oil. When Will Rogers visited the ranch in the 1930s, he humorously described the family as having “an oil well for every cow.”
Not much has changed for the Waggoner Ranch in terms of production over the years as oil and cattle continue to be the highest-produced commodities. When W.T. (Tom) Waggoner drilled for water in 1902 and hit oil, the new discovery had a lasting impact on the ranch. W.T. was initially disgusted. Oil was a nuisance at a time when every good cattleman knew the value of water. With the advent of the automobile in the 1920s, W.T.’s attitude changed and he built the Waggoner Refinery to bolster oil production.
W.T. Waggoner was 16 when he led a cattle drive to Kansas and netted $55,000 as seed money for today’s ranch.
Today the Waggoner Ranch has 1,200 oil-producing wells that have yielded between 35,000 to 41,000 barrels of oil per month. Cowboy humorist Will Rogers was a close friend of the Waggoner family and famously observed during a 1930s visit that “there’s an oil well for every cow.”
When oil was discovered on the ranch, the Waggoner business interest played a vital role in developing oil and gas resources in the region. The ranch integrated the oil business into the ranch operations to the point that refiner cars and oil storage tanks bore the Waggoner brand. Oil production on Waggoner land was important to the fortunes of the Texas company that later became known as Texaco.
About 26,000 acres of the ranch are devoted to growing feed and grazing plots for cattle. This allows the ranch to produce most if not all of the necessary feed requirements for its massive herd. Water is also supplied by thousands of small ponds scattered about the property to provide cattle with plenty of available water sources no matter where they are on the property. In addition to the ponds, cattle have access to the two large lakes within the ranch boundary.
The Waggoners began breeding Durham shorthorn cattle about 1885, and then Hereford cattle were introduced early in the 1890s. Since 1917 the stock has been predominantly Hereford although the ranch has tried experimental crossbreeding programs with Angus, Brahman, Simbrah and Brangus bulls.
Passion for Horses
Thanks to the efforts of E. Paul Waggoner as head of the horse division, the ranch became known for producing excellent Quarter Horses.
Horses were one of W.T. Waggoner’s passions. He loved breeding and raising fine horses. He built a racetrack— Arlington Downs—on his farm between Dallas and Fort Worth and was also one of the supporters in 1933 of the Texas parimutuel racing bill. The $3 million facility with a track and a 6,000-seat grandstand was constructed in late 1929. W.T. lived to see the early success of Arlington Downs but died of a stroke in 1934. In 1937 the state legislature repealed the parimutuel laws and Arlington Downs was sold to commercial developers, used for rodeos and demolished in 1957.
Several members of the Waggoner family shared a passion for fine horses and always kept a stable of Thoroughbreds. One member of the family raised polo ponies. The ranch eventually became known for producing excellent Quarter Horses thanks to the efforts of E. Paul Waggoner, one of W.T.’s three children. Some of their horses were bred strictly for ranch work and others for the show arena, but they all had one thing in common—they were cow horses.
The most famous of these horses was Poco Bueno, which means “pretty good” in Spanish. Foaled in 1944, Poco Bueno turned out to be more than “pretty good” and was eventually inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 1990. The solid brown horse stood 15 hands high, weighed about 1,200 pounds and was trained as a cutting horse. He dominated the Quarter Horse breed for decades and was the first Quarter Horse to be insured for $100,000.
Poco Bueno sired 405 registered foals, which yielded 36 AQHA champions with three in the National Cutting Horse Association’s Hall of Fame. When Poco Bueno died in 1969, the family had him buried in a standing position in a grave across from the ranch entrance on Highway 283 and placed a four-ton granite marker next to the grave bearing Poco Bueno’s name, picture and inscription—“Champion and Sire of Champions.”
Today the horse operation at the ranch is known as the Whiteface division and is a state-of-the-art training/ breeding facility located in the northeastern portion of the ranch. The operation can breed outside mares as well as ship cooled or frozen semen. The facility is equipped to do embryo transfers and has both indoor and outdoor arenas, two barns and over 30 stalls.
Finding a Founding Date
The stone entrance to the headquarters on the Sachueista (also spelled Zacaweista) Division of the ranch marks the 1853 date Dan Waggoner filed on the land and the 1934 date W.T. Waggoner died. | Photo by Wyman Meinzer
Despite the fact that the impressive entrance to the ranch has a date of 1853 chiseled in stone, many publications and news sources report 1849 as the founding date of the Waggoner Ranch. The problem with that date is that Daniel Waggoner in 1849 was mourning the death of his father in Hopkins County, Texas, where his family had moved from Missouri in 1848. He learned the ranching business from his father, but he didn’t own land.
Two years after his father’s death, he married 16-year-old Nancy Moore. The young couple had a son, William Thomas (Tom or W.T.) on Aug. 31, 1852. When Nancy died a year after Tom’s birth, Dan left his son in the care of his mother and sisters to pursue his dream of becoming a successful cattleman.
Northwest Texas was open range in the 1850s when Dan and his 15-year-old Black slave trailed 242 Longhorns and six horses to Wise County. During the 1850s and 1860s, western Wise County was a frontier area frequented by hostile Indians and marauding cattle thieves.
Thousands of acres of free land were available for settlement, and Dan quickly filed on 160 acres on Cattle Creek near the town of Decatur in 1853. That’s when he became a landowner—171 years ago. It’s the date chiseled on the entrance of today’s Waggoner Ranch. Dan purchased 320 additional acres in 1856 close to Cactus Hill, 18 miles west of Decatur. That purchase marked the first of many expansions until his land eventually became a ranching empire.
Dan Waggoner initially managed his ranch from his 16- room Victorian home in Decatur, Tex. The grand mansion on a hill was built in 1883 and had six bathrooms. | Photo by Michael Barera
Dan lived near Decatur in 1859 when he married Sicily (Scylly) Ann Halsell, the 16-year-old daughter of Electious and Elisabeth J. Halsell. After his marriage, Dan sent for Tom and moved his family into his log house at Cactus Hill, where they lived until after the Civil War.
Dan’s family moved numerous times as his cattle empire grew, but this pattern changed in 1883 with the construction in Decatur of a Victorian mansion named El Castile. The grand home was built on a hill that not only provided a view of Decatur but also was the most prominent structure in town.
Creating a Business and a Legacy
As the frontier pushed westward, Dan expanded his herd and bought more land in nearby counties. He wanted Tom to take control of his cattle business so he was careful to train his young son. Dan gave Tom $12 and sent him to Abilene, Kan., with a herd of 5,000 steers, a group of drovers and 50 hard-used saddle horses. They wintered the herd in Clay County, drove the cattle to market in the spring and netted a $55,000 profit that became the seed money for the Waggoner empire. In today’s currency, $55,000 would be an estimated $1.2 million. By 1870 they were partners operating under the title of D. Waggoner and Son.
Somewhere along the way, Tom started to be called W.T., and the single D Waggoner brand changed to the triple reversed D as the Waggoner trademark. Was the brand changed to make it harder for rustlers to alter or was it created when a blacksmith inadvertently read W.T.’s hand-drawn design upside down? The answer is only one of many fact-or-fiction questions surrounding the Waggoners.
Although Dan Waggoner had no formal education, he was a shrewd businessman whose investments included not only land and livestock but also five banks, three cottonseed oil mills, and a coal company. As the Waggoner holdings increased, W.T. moved the ranch headquarters to the Zacaweista (also spelled Sachueista) Ranch south of the Red River near Vernon, but Daniel remained in Decatur. When Dan died of kidney disease in Colorado Springs, Colo., in 1902, he owned about 80,000 cattle, 525,000 acres of land and leases on more than 100,000 acres in Indian Territory.
As the large ranches of Texas confronted the problems of Indian raids and cattle rustlers, Dan and W.T. Waggoner met in 1877 with Burk Burnett (6666 Ranch), Col. C.C. Slaughter (Slaughter Ranches), and Jim Loving (JA Ranch) to form what today is known as the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA), which is headquartered in Fort Worth and known by every cattleman in the state. Because of W.T.’s influence in the Quarter Horse breed and the horse industry, he was a founding member of the American Quarter Horse Association.
Trouble in the Family
W.T. Waggoner determined at an early age that he would follow in his father’s footsteps and master the cattle business. He had become a partner at the age of 17, but he had full reins of the empire by the time he was 27.
W.T. married one of his stepmother’s younger sisters, 18-year-old Ella Halsell, in 1877 in the county courthouse. The bride’s “attendants” were 12 of W.T.’s cowboy friends. The couple eventually had five children, three of whom survived to adulthood: Electra, Guy and E. Paul Waggoner.
As W.T. slowly acquired land through the remainder of the 19th century, the ranch grew from 1889 to 1903 and encompassed more than a million acres in all or part of six counties. W.T. decided in 1909 at the age of 57 to keep the east side of the ranch, called Whiteface, for himself and give the three smaller 85,000-acre parcels—Zacaweista, Four Corners and Santa Rosa—to his three children as Christmas gifts. He hoped this gift would help them learn the ranching business.
That plan didn’t work well as the Waggoner children, in the words of Texas Monthly magazine, “turned their acreage over to professionals, moved away and pursued flamboyance.” The squabbling that ensnared the family for a century began that Christmas Day and included decades of litigation and fierce courtroom battles that ended with the sale of the ranch to Stan Kroenke. The good news is that the massive ranch remained intact even though the family fell apart. ★
This article appears in the Winter 2024 issue of the Ranch Record. Would you like to read more stories about NRHC and ranching life? When you become a member of the Ranching Heritage Association, you’ll receive the award-winning Ranch Record magazine and more while supporting the legacy and preservation of our ranching heritage. Become a member today.
