DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, the year was 1866, and Captain Richard King had himself a problem — or rather, he had himself an opportunity dressed up as a problem. The Civil War had ended in 1865, and the business of recovery was underway.
King Ranch had beef herds, and those herds were, as folks put it, money on the hoof. But what about the cull animals — the ones that weren't going to market on their own four legs? Well, Captain King wasn't the kind of man to let value walk away unaccounted for.
Hides meant leather. Tallow meant soap. And if you could salvage those by-products, even a cull animal had something left to say for itself.
So King founded a business to do exactly that. A slaughtering plant, built right on Santa Gertrudis Creek, about two miles west of ranch headquarters. The heart of the operation was a set of round iron vats — each one about eighteen feet long and six feet in diameter — where the tallow was rendered down.
Now that is a serious piece of ironwork. The plant ran, did its business, and then closed within four years. Gone before most operations even find their footing.
But here's where the story gets interesting, because those vats didn't just disappear. Two of them sat right there at the old site for fifty years. Fifty years.
Long after the fires went cold and the workers moved on. Eventually, one of the two was moved out to the Kingsville oil field to serve as a storage tank. Sounded like a fine second life — until it proved unsatisfactory, and back it came, placed at the sillo barro pens for water storage instead.
The other vat didn't get a second act. World War II came calling, and it was cut up for scrap iron. That's the thing about history — sometimes it gets repurposed, and sometimes it just gets used up.
The site of the old plant, though? Still carries its name. Still called Matanza pasture — that's the Spanish word for slaughter — and the land remembers even when the iron is gone.
And one more thing, maybe the finest detail of all: descendants of the very employees who worked that hide and tallow plant were, a century later, working as King Ranch cowboys. The plant closed. The vats rusted or were cut apart.
But the families stayed. Some stories don't end — they just change jobs.
What the marker says
Business founded by Capt. Richard King to advance economic recovery after the Civil War had ended in 1865. The King Ranch beef herds were "money on the hoof", but cull animals also had value if by-products (hides for leather, tallow as a soap ingredient, etc.) could be salvaged from them. A slaughtering plant was built on Santa Gertrudis Creek, about two miles west of ranch headquarters and north of this marker. The tallow was rendered in round iron vats about 18 feet long and six feet in diameter. In service only a short time (plant closed within four years), two of these remained at the old site for 50 years. One of the two was later moved to the Kingsville oil field for use as a storage tank. When it proved unsatisfactory, it was returned and placed at sillo barro pens for water storage. Second vat was cut up for scrap iron during World War II. Site of the old plant is still called "Matanza" (slaughter) pasture. Descendants of the hide and tallow plant employees are working a century later as King Ranch cowboys.