Marfa Stockyards

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, out here in Presidio County, the land doesn't give up its riches easy. It takes big country to raise big herds, and when you're talking Presidio, Jeff Davis, and Brewster counties all together, well, friend, you're talking about some of the vastest rangeland in all of Texas.

So when the Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio Railway company built the Marfa Stockyards in 1920, they weren't thinkin' small. They were thinkin' about a river of cattle that needed a place to meet the iron rails. And that river showed up.

As many as seventy thousand head of cattle shipped from those pens in a single year. Seventy thousand. You let that number sit with you a moment.

That's not a herd; that's a nation of cattle, funneling through one central point, lowing and stomping and raising a dust cloud you could probably see from the next county over. The volume got so great that by 1929 the facilities had to be enlarged just to keep pace with the business. Then the 1930s brought something new into those pens: sheep and goats joined the cattle, shipping out from the same stockyards, the whole operation humming along.

Now, as it goes with most things built around a single way of doing business, change came riding in. Trucking arrived in the area, and when it did, business at the stockyards declined. But here's the part of this story that doesn't end in abandonment; those stockyards are still standing, still useful, still weighing animals before shipment.

Seventy thousand head in a single year, and the scales are still turning. Some things out here in West Texas, they just refuse to quit.

What the marker says

Built in 1920 by the Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio Railway company, the Marfa stockyards provided a central shipping point for livestock raised in Presidio, Jeff Davis, and Brewster counties. As many as 70,000 head of cattle were shipped from these pens in a single year. The facilities were enlarged in 1929 to handle the great volume of business. By the 1930s sheep and goats were also being shipped from here. Although business declined after the introduction of trucking to the area, the stockyards are still used to weigh animals prior to shipment. (1988)