DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Frying Pan Ranch in Potter County. Now, there are ranches, and then there are ranches that change everything. The Frying Pan Ranch is the second kind.
It started with a man named Henry B. Sanborn, Texas sales agent for a fellow you may have heard of — Joseph F. Glidden, inventor of barbed wire.
Together, these two men established what would become the first big cattle ranch ever fenced with barbed wire. And that wasn't an accident. The whole point of this place was to prove something: that barbed wire could control the use of grass, preserve herd bloodlines, and — this part the cowboys probably didn't love hearing — reduce ranch work forces.
Sanborn was the one who developed the ranch, and he came up with a brand for it. He called it the Panhandle brand. Seemed reasonable enough to him.
But then the cowboys got to work branding twelve thousand head of cattle originally pastured there, and somewhere between the smoke and the iron, they started calling it the Frying Pan. That name stuck. The Panhandle brand did not.
Fencing began in 1881. The wire itself was freighted all the way from Dodge City. The cedar posts were cut closer to home — out of the Canadian River valley and down in Palo Duro Canyon, about forty miles to the southeast.
You want to talk about a project. Stringing wire across that open Panhandle country, post by post, mile by mile. And it worked.
The Frying Pan Ranch proved the case for barbed wire fencing — what the marker calls the most important contribution to the economic conquest of the Great Plains. That is not a small claim. But given what came after, it's hard to argue with.
Potter County was organized in 1887, with Amarillo as the county seat. Then in 1889, Glidden and Sanborn moved the city one mile east to their own townsite addition. They were not men who sat still.
By 1892, the two partners had decided to divide their holdings: Sanborn traded his interest in the Frying Pan Ranch for Glidden's interest in the city. Time passed, as it does. The ranch's eastern fence line — that wire they started stringing in 1881 — eventually became Western Street in Amarillo.
The city grew right up to the edge of it. The old ranch headquarters sat out at Tecovas Springs, six miles to the northwest. Glidden's heirs still manage the family estate.
And somewhere under the streets of Amarillo, if you know where to look, you're walking the old boundary of the ranch that showed the world what a little wire could do.
What the marker says
First big cattle ranch fenced with barbed wire. Established to demonstrate effectiveness of barbed wire in controlling use of grass, in preserving herd bloodlines and in reducing ranch work forces. Owned by barbed wire inventor Joseph F. Glidden and his Texas sales agent, Henry B. Sanborn. Sanborn developed the ranch, devising the "Panhandle brand" -- immediately renamed "Frying Pan" by cowboys branding 12,000 head of cattle originally pastured here. Fencing began here in 1881 with wire freighted from Dodge City. Cedar posts were cut in Canadian River valley and Palo Duro Canyon (40 mi. SE). Ranch was successful in proving the advantages of barbed wire fencing: the most important contribution to the economic conquest of the Great Plains. Potter County was organized in 1887 with Amarillo the county seat. Glidden and Sanborn moved city one mile east to their townsite addition in 1889. In 1892 Sanborn traded his interest in the Frying Pan for Glidden's interest in the city. In time the eastern fence line of the ranch became Western Street in Amarillo. Heirs of Glidden still manage the family estate. The old ranch headquarters was located at Tecovas Springs (6 mi. NW). (1970)