Wednesday, May 13
We left New Mexico today and are now in the upper panhandle of Texas, cattle country. We passed by several feed yards where tens of thousands of cattle are fattened up before being shipped to packing houses. As we entered Texas we saw huge fields of yellow wildflowers. By the time I got the camera out we had passed the best views but here are a few of the not quite so impressive displays.
Thursday, May 14
Today we visited the XIT Museum, an interesting facility primarily dedicated to the history of the famous XIT Ranch. This cattle ranch was the largest cattle ranch ever under fence consisting of 3,000,000 acres along the western edge of the Texas panhandle. Their website has a few very interesting pages on the history of this ranch.
The XIT Ranch 
(from the XIT museum website)
The XIT Ranch in the 1880s was the largest range in the world under fence and it all laid in the Texas Panhandle. It's three million acres sprawled from the old Yellow House headquarters, near what is now Lubbock, Texas, northward to the Oklahoma Panhandle, in an irregular strip that was roughly 30 miles wide.
The XIT range was the largest in the world under fence. Texas, the biggest state in the union, used the sale to pay for its red granite capitol, still the largest state capitol on the North American Continent. The Austin structure, after more than a century, still houses the Lone Star state government and as capitols go, is second in size only to the one at Washington, D.C. In one respect it is even bigger than the U.S. Capitol, its dome stands seven feet higher.
In 1875, the Lone Star state government was getting cramped in its old capitol and the Texas constitutional convention set aside 3,000,000 Panhandle acres with which to get a new capitol. Action dragged until fire destroyed the old capitol, November 9, 1881. Gov. Oran M. Roberts called a special legislative session. It struck a bargain with Charles B. and John V. Farwell, brothers of Chicago, under which they agreed to build a $3,000,000.00 capitol and accept the 3,000,000 Panhandle acres in payment.
In 1885 the first cattle, long of leg and long of horn, rolled onto the XIT. Thousands of hooves drummed up the trail and the longhorns were pushed on to the No. 1 division headquarters at Buffalo Springs, 32 miles north of the current city of Dalhart. At one time, the ranch ran 150,000 head of cattle.
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