"C" Ranch House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Andrews County, there's a place that carries a whole lot of firsts on its shoulders, and the story starts in 1883. That was the year a man named Nelson Morris, out of Chicago, went and purchased the first privately owned land in the Midland area.

Now just let that sit for a second. First. Privately.

Owned. In the whole Midland area. Whatever was out there before 1883, it wasn't anybody's deed to hold.

Then Morris came along and changed that. The place was known back then as the Chicago Ranch, named after the city Morris called home, and it didn't take long for that ranch to start racking up distinctions that folks out here still talk about. The first wire fence in West Texas went up on that land.

Think about what West Texas looked like before wire fence, open range in every direction, wind and cattle and sky running together without a single strand to separate them. And then, right there on the Chicago Ranch, someone stretched the first one. But that's not all.

The first windmill in West Texas, too. That tall spinning contraption pulling water up out of the earth, the thing that made permanent settlement in this country even possible, its first turn happened here. And if you're keepin' count, that's two firsts already, and we haven't even gotten to the cattle.

Nelson Morris was running what the marker calls the world's largest herd of Black Angus cattle on this ground. Not the largest in Texas. Not the largest in the West.

The world. So the next time you drive through Andrews County and the land looks like it's just sitting there doing nothing, remember what it was once holding: the edge of private ownership, the first fence, the first windmill, and more Black Angus than anywhere else on earth. That's the C Ranch House, and it earned every word on that marker.

What the marker says

First privately owned land in Midland area, purchased in 1883 by Nelson Morris of Chicago. Then known as the Chicago Ranch, it had the first wire fence and windmill in West Texas and world's largest herd of Black Angus cattle. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1966