Pitchfork Ranch

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Way out in Dickens County, on land that runs so wide and flat it can make a grown person feel genuinely small, there is a ranch with a story that starts with a single Irish-born man and ends up stretching all the way to Kansas and Wyoming. That man was Jerry Savage, and around 1879 he established an open range ranch right here at this site.

No fanfare recorded. Just a man and a piece of Texas. The first structures weren't exactly grand.

They were dugouts carved right into the river bank. That's where this story begins, in the dirt, literally. Then 1881 rolls around, and two men come calling.

Eugene F. Williams, a St. Louis businessman, and Dan B.

Gardner, a Texas cattleman, purchased the ranch from Jerry Savage. Two years later, in 1883, they joined forces with a landholder named Sam Lazarus, and together those three men formed something with real weight to it: the Pitchfork Land and Cattle Company, Incorporated. Now, Williams wouldn't hold on forever.

His heirs later acquired controlling interest of that cattle empire. The empire itself, though, it wasn't going anywhere. In fact it was only growin'.

Those dugouts in the river bank gave way to proper buildings, the present ones dating from 1902. And the ranch itself doubled its original size, reaching one hundred and sixty-five thousand acres. One hundred and sixty-five thousand.

And if that weren't enough Texas for you, Pitchfork Ranch went on to operate ranches in Kansas and Wyoming too. Jerry Savage dug into a river bank in 1879, and what grew out of that dirt turned into something that outgrew Texas itself.

What the marker says

Irish-born, Jerry Savage established an open range ranch at this site about 1879. In 1881, St. Louis businessman Eugene F. Williams and Texas cattleman Dan B. Gardner purchased the ranch and in 1883 joined forces with landholder Sam Lazarus to form the Pitchfork Land & Cattle Company, Inc. Williams' heirs later acquired controlling interest of the cattle empire. The first structures here were dugouts in the river bank, while the present buildings date from 1902. Pitchfork Ranch has doubled its original size to 165,000 acres and now operates ranches in Kansas and Wyoming. (1983)