Silver Cliff Ranch

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Concho County, there's a place called Silver Cliff Ranch, and the story starts with a man named John A. Loomis, coming all the way down from Syracuse, New York.

He and his brother-in-law, Welton B. Ostrander, looked out at this stretch of Texas and decided, in 1882, that forty-six thousand acres of it was going to be theirs. Forty-six thousand acres.

That's not a ranch so much as a declaration of intent. Now, a man serious enough to claim that kind of ground is serious enough to build something worthy of it, and that's exactly what happened. The very rock to do the job came right out of the ranch itself, quarried from the land they'd claimed.

And in 1883, German stonemasons got to work. What they built, out here in the middle of West Texas, was a Pennsylvania Dutch-style barn and house. Think about that combination for a moment.

New York money, Texas land, German craftsmen, Pennsylvania Dutch design, all meeting at one address in Concho County. The walls of that barn and house have been standing ever since, cut from the same ground they sit on. Silver Cliff Ranch, founded 1882.

Some places earn their permanence.

What the marker says

Founded 1882 on 46,000 acres by John A. Loomis, of Syracuse, New York, and his brother-in-law, Welton B. Ostrander. Rock quarried on the ranch was used in 1883 by German stonemasons to build Pennsylvania Dutch-style barn and house. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1966