DUANE
Duane's take
The marker's the one doin' the talking here — I'm just the voice it borrowed for the road. Now, some stories are big because of what happened in them. And some stories are big because somebody had the foresight to write it all down before the world moved on.
This is the second kind. Cordia Sloan Duke was born January 10, 1887, in Belton, Missouri. By the time she was seventeen, she was already out ahead of herself — teaching school in Indian Territory, which you and I know today as Oklahoma.
That right there tells you something about the kind of woman she was going to become. In 1907, she married Robert L. Duke.
Robert had come up through the ranching world the hard way, starting as a ranch hand and rising all the way to division manager of the XIT Ranch — which, the marker will have you know, was at that time the largest ranch in the world. Three million acres. Say that number slowly.
Three. Million. Acres.
Now, a spread that size doesn't run itself. It ran on cowboys — 150 of them — and Cordia Duke looked after every last one. That's the phrase the marker uses, and it's the right one.
Not managed, not supervised. Looked after. There's a whole world of difference in those words.
And here's where the story tips from impressive into something else entirely. Cordia kept a diary. Everyday events, ranch life, the particular texture of a world that was already beginning to slip away even as she was living it.
But she didn't stop there. She turned around and encouraged 81 other people to do the same. Eighty-one.
She didn't just preserve her own corner of that life — she organized a preservation. What came out of all that was an authentic account of a passing phase of American life. That's what the marker calls it — a passing phase.
The cowboy and his work. The kind of thing that seems permanent when you're in the middle of it, and then one day you look up and it's gone. Cordia Sloan Duke died July 23, 1966.
She is remembered here as a chronicler of a unique era in the history of the Southwest. She saw it coming, the ending of that era. And she made sure it didn't leave without a record.
What the marker says
(Jan. 10, 1887 - July 23, 1966) Chronicler of a unique era in the history of the Southwest. Born in Belton, Mo. At 17, taught school in Indian Territory (Okla.) In 1907, she married Robert L. Duke, a ranch hand who had risen to division manager of the XIT Ranch (then world's largest). In addition to ther own family, she "looked after" the 150 cowboys who worked the 3,000,000-acre spread. Kept a diary of everyday events in ranch life around her and successfully encouraged 81 others to do likewise. Thus was preserved an authentic account of a passing phase of American life -- the cowboy and his work. (1969)