Bud Matthews Switch of the Texas Central Railway

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about this place out here in Shackelford County. In 1900, the Texas Central Railway pushed a line northwest from Albany, right across a stretch of cattle country belonging to Rose Ella Matthews Conrad. Now Ella wasn't the kind of person to watch a railroad come through her land and do nothing about it.

Neither was her brother, John A. Matthews, who went by Bud. The moment that line was laid, the two of them got to work, and before long there were cattle pens and a loading chute standing right here at this spot.

The switch took Bud's name, and it stuck. Word spread to the surrounding ranchers, and they started moving their cattle through here, bound for markets in Fort Worth. This little switch out on the West Texas plain got busy.

Real busy. At the peak of it, as many as a hundred and five thousand head of cattle were shipped out of here in a single year. Let that number sit with you a moment.

A hundred and five thousand. The railroad kept running until 1967, and then it ceased operations. But here's the part of the story that lands a little different: the ranchers didn't stop.

They just switched from rail to road, loading cattle onto trucks from the very same site. Some places outlast the thing that made them famous.

What the marker says

In 1900 the Texas Central Railway extended a line northwest from Albany across this portion of Rose Ella (Matthews) Conrad's cattle ranch. Ella and her brother John A. "Bud" Matthews, for whom this site is named, promptly constructed cattle pens and a loading chute at this location. Surrounding ranchers soon were shipping their cattle from this switch to markets in Fort Worth. As many as 105,000 head of cattle were shipped annually until the railroad ceased operations in 1967. Since that year local ranchers have continued to load cattle onto trucks from this site. (1992)