DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now picture Crockett County in the 1920s. Wide open rangeland, sheep and cattle as far as the eye can care to follow — and fences.
Fences everywhere. By that decade, many ranchers had gone ahead and fenced their land, which sounds reasonable enough until you consider what it meant for the fellow trying to move his herd. The railroad shipping point was up in Barnhart, twenty-three miles north of this very spot, and suddenly getting there required crossing your neighbor's land, tearing up his grass, and testing the limits of a working relationship nobody wanted to strain.
Somebody had to solve that problem. And somebody did. In 1924, the Ozona-Barnhart Trap Company was organized in Ozona.
The idea was elegant in the way that the best ideas usually are — you don't fight the fences, you thread right through them. The company bought or leased land specifically for trails, for traps — those are small pastures, mind you — for pens, and for water wells. What they built was a corridor.
A dedicated corridor running roughly thirty-four miles, from south of Ozona all the way up to Barnhart, with branch lines fanning out through the county. Your livestock could travel that whole route without ever crossing a neighbor's fence or so much as nibbling a blade of his grass. The hub of this whole operation sat two miles northwest of here — the McNutt traps, fourteen hundred and forty acres of pasture serving as the beating heart of the trail system.
Stock sold to area ranchmen financed the enterprise to get it going, and after that, the company ran on a charge per head for services used. You move ten sheep through, you pay for ten sheep. Clean and practical.
And it worked. The O.-B. Trap Company, as folks called it, saved the ranching industry at a moment when ranching was the only important business in all of Crockett County.
That is not an exaggeration — that is what the record says. The only important business. One corridor of leased land and a handful of pens stood between the county's economy and a real serious kind of trouble.
Now, nothing lasts forever on its original terms. Truck transportation rose up through the 1930s, and the need for those long trail drives started to dwindle. But don't think ranchers just dropped the tradition overnight — drives were still being held all the way into the 1950s.
Some habits die hard, especially the ones that work. These days the O.-B. Trap Company leases its land for grazing or gas production.
Different cargo moving through the same patch of Crockett County. The corridor that saved a county's livelihood now serves a quieter purpose — but it's still out there, still earning its keep, same as ever.
What the marker says
By the 1920s many ranchers in Crockett County had fenced their land, preventing their neighbors from driving sheep and cattle to the railroad shipping point in Barnhart (23 miles north of here). A solution to the problem was offered by the Ozona-Barnhart Trap Co., which was organized in Ozona in 1924. By buying or leasing land for trails, traps (small pastures), pens, and water wells, the company established a corridor through which ranchers could drive their livestock to the railroad without crossing their neighbor's fences or destroying his grass supply. The main trail extended about 34 miles, from south of Ozona to Barnhart, with branch lines throughout the county. The McNutt traps (2 miles northwest), with 1340 acres of pasture, were the hub of the trail. Sale of stock to area ranchmen financed the enterprise, and operating expenses were handled by a charge per head of livestock for services used. The O. - B. Trap Co. saved the ranching industry at a time when it was the only important business in Crockett County. The need for the trail dwindled with the rise of truck transportation in the 1930s, but drives were still held until the 1950s. The O. - B. Trap Co. now leases its land for grazing or gas production.