DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just the one passin' it along. Now if you're drivin' through Cochran County and you feel like the land goes on forever in every direction — well, you're not imagining things. This stretch of West Texas once belonged to one of the great ranching empires of the state.
We're talkin' about the C.C. Slaughter Ranch, and its headquarters sat right here, commanding two hundred and forty-six thousand, six hundred and sixty-nine acres spread across Cochran and Hockley counties. Two hundred and forty-six thousand acres.
Let that settle in. The man behind it all was Colonel C.C. Slaughter — and that title wasn't for decoration.
Slaughter was a figure of serious standing in Texas life, a leader in banking, in ranching, and in religious life. He wasn't just accumulating land for the sake of it; he was building something. Between 1898 and 1901, he purchased the land that would make up this ranch.
Now, when an operation that size is just getting on its feet, you make do. The first headquarters out here wasn't a grand estate. It was a half-dugout.
Half in the earth, half above it — the kind of place that tells you everything about what it took to plant roots in this country. But the ranch grew, and so did its ambitions. By 1915, the C.C.
Slaughter Cattle Company, Incorporated, was ready to build something worthy of the scale they were working at. They brought men from Mexico to construct what would become an adobe and concrete quadrangle — built on the order of a Spanish hacienda. A deliberate design, crafted hands, real permanence.
At the time, this was considered one of the finest ranch buildings in all of Texas. Not just fine for out here on the Llano. Finest in the state.
From half-dugout to hacienda. That's the arc of the Slaughter Ranch — and standing here, looking at what those men built in 1915, it's hard to argue the point.
What the marker says
Headquarters for pioneering C.C. Slaughter Ranch, made up of 246,669 acres of Cochran and Hockley county lands. Col. C. C. Slaughter -- a leader in banking, ranching and religious life in Texas -- purchased land 1898-1901. First headquarters was a half-dugout. In 1915, C. C. Slaughter Cattle Company, Inc., brought men from Mexico to build this adobe and concrete quadrangle, on order of a Spanish hacienda. This was one of finest Texas ranch buildings of its era. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1962