Substation No. 14

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Picture the Edwards Plateau, 1914. The grass is gone, the water is low, and ranchers across this hard country are watching their sheep and goats drop, not just to thirst, but to poisonous plants creeping in where good forage used to be.

It was the kind of slow disaster that makes a man stare at the horizon and wonder what exactly he's going to do about it. Well, four men decided to do something. B.M.

Halbert, V.A. Brown, R.E. Taylor, and J.B.

Murrah, along with the newly-formed Texas Sheep and Goat Raisers Association, put their heads together and proposed a local experiment station. Not a prayer, not a petition. A station.

With science in it. They took that idea to the Texas Legislature, and the Legislature appropriated ten thousand dollars to establish what would be called Substation No. 14, routed through Texas A&M University. But ten thousand dollars only gets you so far out here.

So the citizens of Edwards and Sutton counties raised additional funds, and together they acquired three thousand four hundred and sixty-two acres: the Annie and D.B. Cusenbary Ranch, sitting right there midway between Rocksprings and Sonora. The station opened in 1916, and here's where the story gets interesting in a quieter, longer way.

The work never really stopped. Plant research. Vaccines.

Range conservation. Watershed protection. Prescribed fire.

The mission kept growing, kept shifting, kept answering whatever the land and the people needed next. In time the place came to be called the Sonora Research Station, and it has contributed (the marker says it plainly) to the ecological, economic, and social well-being of the region. A drought pushed four men to ask a hard question back in 1914.

More than a hundred years later, this stretch of the Edwards Plateau is still living with the answer.

What the marker says

In 1914, Edwards Plateau ranchers were in a severe drought and losing sheep and goats to poisonous plants. Ranchers B.M. Halbert, V.A. Brown, R.E. Taylor and J.B. Murrah and the newly-formed Texas Sheep and Goat Raisers Association proposed a local experiment station. The Texas Legislature appropriated $10,000 to establish Substation No. 14 through Texas A&M University, and citizens of Edwards and Sutton counties raised additional funds to acquire 3,462 acres of the Annie and D.B. Cusenbary Ranch midway between Rocksprings and Sonora. Since its opening in 1916, work has varied from plant research and vaccines to range conservation, watershed protection and prescribed fire. Later called the Sonora Research Station, it has contributed to the ecological, economic and social well-being of the region. (2019)