DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Picture Borden County, early nineteen hundreds, and understand that what was about to happen was part land rush, part prizefight, and all Texas. Texas courts had placed certain lands in the public domain in 1902, and that decision lit a fuse you could hear sizzling from one end of the county to the other.
The ranchers who'd been using that land — they weren't about to let it slip through their fingers without a fight. So they did what any well-organized outfit would do: they sent their cowboys down to the county clerk's office wearing blue ribbon armbands, ready to file their claims. On the other side of that filing window stood the nesters — settlers angling for the same ground — and they had their own colors.
Red ribbons. You could tell at a glance which side a man was on, and most days that was not the kind of clarity that calms a situation down. Now, somebody in Borden County had the good sense to put Sheriff W.
K. Clark in the room, and Sheriff Clark did the only sensible thing available to him: he disarmed the men. Kept the whole powder keg from going up in one terrible flash.
But disarmed doesn't mean peaceful, and for three days straight — three days prior to the filing deadlines — those cowboys and nesters had what the marker calls, and I love this phrase, knockdown, dragout fights right there at the filing window. Not gunfights. Fistfights.
Over paperwork. Only in Texas. When the dust settled and the ribbons came off, the nesters had claimed their land.
But the land had the last word. Droughts came, and they were merciless. The nesters starved out.
The land they'd fought so hard to take up reverted to grazing — right back to what the ranchers had always intended for it. Sometimes the fight isn't really the ending. Sometimes the land just waits you out.
What the marker says
Cowboys and settlers fought here in early days for right to claim lands placed in public domain in 1902 by Texas courts. To keep land they were using, ranchers sent their men, wearing blue ribbon armbands, to file claims at office of county clerk. Nesters, with red ribbons, rushed for same land. To avoid bloodshed, Sheriff W. K. Clark disarmed men. For 3 days prior to deadlines, the cowboys and nesters had knockdown, dragout fights at the filing window. Later, nesters starved out, because of drouths; land they took up reverted to grazing. (1970)