DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Spade Ranch, out here in Hockley County. Now, most ranches out on the South Plains have a story. But the Spade Ranch — the Spade has got a pedigree that starts not with a cowboy, not with a trail boss, but with a man who figured out how to fence the West.
Isaac L. Ellwood — born 1833, died 1910 — made his fortune in barbed wire. Barbed wire.
Think about that for a moment. The invention that changed the face of the open range, and here's one of the men behind it, looking out at the South Plains and deciding he wants a piece of it. A very large piece of it.
In 1889, Ellwood bought from veteran cattlemen D. H. and J. W.
Snyder a range that stretched eight miles wide and twenty-five miles long — a hundred and twenty-eight thousand acres, sprawling across Hale, Hockley, Lamb, and Lubbock counties. That's not a ranch. That's a small country.
Now, the Spade brand itself — that distinctive mark — was already running on calves down at Renderbrook Spring, Ellwood's southernmost ranch, down in Mitchell County. Those Spade-branded calves were what gave this vast South Plains range its name and its identity. But Ellwood wasn't done.
He kept buying. Kept reaching. By the time he was finished acquiring South Plains land, the Spade Range ran fifty-four miles long.
Fifty-four miles. You could drive it today and still feel like you hadn't gotten anywhere. The headquarters sat originally up in Lamb County, but as the decades rolled on and farmland sales reshaped the landscape in the nineteen-twenties, headquarters moved — shifted to South Camp, which sits just three-tenths of a mile north of this very marker.
And here's the part that tends to stop people in their tracks. Ellwood's descendants — his own blood — still own and still operate the Spade Ranch. The man who helped invent the wire that fenced the frontier left behind something that outlasted the frontier itself.
That's the Spade. Still running. Still branded.
Still here.
What the marker says
[Spade brand in title] Founded by Isaac L. Ellwood (1833-1910), inventor who made a fortune in barbed wire, and bought (1889) from veteran cattlemen D. H. and J. W. Snyder an 8 x 25-mile range (128,000 acres) in Hale, Hockley, Lamb and Lubbock counties. This range was used for Spade-branded calves from Renderbrook Spring, his southmost ranch, in Mitchell County. He continued buying South Plains land until Spade Range was 54 miles long. Headquarters (originally in Lamb County) was moved to South Camp (3/10 mi. N of here) after farm-land sales in 1920s. Ellwood's descendants still own and operate the Spade. (1972)