DUANE
Duane's take
Now, I'm tellin' this one straight from the official marker — so let's talk about the King Ranch. Richard King was born in 1824. By the time most men are just findin' their footing, he was already a Rio Grande steamboat captain — a man who knew how to move things, how to read a river, how to push forward when the current pushed back.
In 1853, he bought two Spanish land grants on Santa Gertrudis Creek and founded what would become the legendary King Ranch. He brought longhorn cattle up from Mexico, and then came the hard part. Droughts.
Cattle thieves. The kind of trouble that breaks lesser operations before they ever really get started. But King battled through it.
He ran the ranch first in partnership with G. K. Lewis — known to everybody as Legs — and later with Mifflin Kenedy and James Walworth.
By the late 1860s, Richard King stood as sole owner. Now, the Civil War years, 1861 to 1865 — that's when the King Ranch took on a particular role. It became a way-station for Confederate cotton moving down toward Mexico.
Cattle and cotton and the whole weight of a war rolling through those south Texas acres. Then came the 1870s, and the Running W brand — King's famous mark — was moving with herds up the cattle trails to northern markets. That brand was known.
People saw it and they knew exactly where those cattle came from. Richard King died in 1885. And here's where the story takes a turn that not many people expect.
His widow, Henrietta Chamberlain King — born 1832, she would live all the way to 1925 — she didn't let the ranch drift. She named a man called Robert Justus Kleberg as ranch manager. Kleberg was born in 1853, and he would go on to marry Henrietta's daughter, Alice Gertrudis King, born 1862.
The families wove themselves together the way roots do under good ground. In the early 1900s, the railroad arrived, and the town of Kingsville was settled, and the ranch that had once felt like the edge of the known world became a little less far from everything. The King-Kleberg descendants kept pushing the operation forward.
Through constant improvement of their herds, they produced a new breed of cattle — the Santa Gertrudis. They raised fine quarter horses and thoroughbreds. And then, in the 1930s, petroleum was discovered on ranch property.
The ground beneath all that grass had been holding something else entirely. Today, the King Ranch has grown to almost one million acres in south Texas — plus holdings in other states and nations. Richard King bought two land grants on a creek in 1853.
What grew out of that is about as Texas as Texas gets.
What the marker says
Richard King (1824-1885), a Rio Grande steamboat captain, bought two Spanish land grants on Santa Gertrudis Creek and founded the legendary King Ranch in 1853. He brought longhorn cattle from Mexico and battled droughts and cattle thieves to build a profitable ranch. Operating first in partnership with G. K. ("Legs") Lewis and later with Mifflin Kenedy and James Walworth, King became sole owner in the late 1860s. During the Civil War (1861-1865), the King Ranch was a way-station for Confederate cotton going to Mexico. Herds carrying King's famous "Running W" brand followed the cattle trails to northern markets in the 1870s. After King died, his widow Henrietta (Chamberlain) (1832-1925) named as ranch manager Robert Justus Kleberg (1853-1932), who later married her daughter Alice Gertrudis King (1862-1944). The ranch became less isolated in the early 1900s, when the railroad arrived and the town of Kingsville was settled. Constant improvement of herds by King-Kleberg descendants produced a new breed of cattle, the Santa Gertrudis, and fine quarter horses and thoroughbreds. Petroleum was discovered on ranch property in the 1930s. Today the King ranch has grown to almost one million acres in south Texas, plus holdings in other states and nations.