DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Out here in Jack County, there's a piece of ground that carries a whole lot of history in a fairly modest footprint — the site of the Loving Ranch House. Built in 1872 by a man named J.
C. Loving, the son of pioneer trail driver Oliver Loving. Now that name — Loving — already carried some weight before J.
C. ever drove a single nail. But J. C. wasn't content to simply inherit a legacy.
He went and built one of his own. He put up that ranch house, and then he did something that would shape the cattle business across this entire region. J.
C. Loving became an organizer — and the first secretary — of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. Think about that for a second.
An organization that would go on to define ranching across Texas and the Southwest, and its very first office? Right there. At that ranch house in Jack County.
The paperwork, the meetings, the handshakes that set the whole thing in motion — all of it happened under that roof. And the story doesn't stop with J. C.
The ranch kept going, passed along and operated by J. C.'s son — Oliver II, carrying the family name forward one more generation. Three generations of Lovings, one piece of Texas ground, and an organization that started in a ranch house and grew into something the whole cattle industry would come to know.
Some places just hold more history than they let on at first glance. This is one of them.
What the marker says
Built 1872 by J. C. Loving, the son of pioneer trail driver Oliver Loving. J. C. Loving was an organizer and first secretary of Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. Organization's first office was at the ranch, which was later operated by Loving's son, Oliver II. (1968)