The rise of an empire

From horse and cattle breeding to land conservation and management, today we live in a world that the King Ranch helped to shape.

From horse and cattle breeding to land conservation and management, today we live in a world that King Ranch helped to shape.

The character of the land itself has fundamentally shaped both history and enterprise on the King Ranch. Property boundaries are artificial; much more relevant to all who live on the land---humans, plants and animals ---are the ecological zones dictated by geography and climate. The larger the spread, the more this becomes true, and the King Ranch is a premier example: Its four Texas divisions located between Corpus Christi and Brownsville cover some 825,000 acres, more ground than the state of Rhode Island.

The climate is humid subtropical becoming more arid inland and supporting a variety of ecological zones. A large part of this ground was once an ocean of rippling grass, broken by streamlets and patches of parched scrubland, known as the “Mustang Desert.”

This installment will focus on the King Ranch contribution to animal breeding---how horse and cattle populations were changed by the people who took possession of this very large chunk of land during the mid-19th century and who continue to maintain stewardship of it today. Yet it is impossible to tell this story without considering many families, not just the Kings, who lived and labored across this large swath of South Texas.

NOT JUST LIVESTOCK

Domestic animal strains with unique and desirable characteristics do not usually arise spontaneously. Even when “sports” emerge, unless they pop up within a well-run breeding program they will persist for only a generation or two before random mating causes the population to sink back into a more or less uniform average physical type. Producing useful kinds of cattle and horses takes people who know how to channel superior individuals into the breeding population while eliminating inferior ones. They must also have money, numerous broodmares, large managed acreage and, above all, persistence---sometimes keeping at it over more than one human generation ---until the desired type is “fixed,” that is to say, reliably self-propagating.

Despite its vastness, the King

Ranch stands out not so much for size as for enterprise. Beginning with Richard King and his partners and wife Henrietta in the 1850s, seven generations of committed, intelligent

and hard-working people have made the ranch into what it is today---a successful multinational agricultural corporation employing more than 100,000 people and invested in producing commodities, including oranges, alfalfa, turf sod, cotton and milo as well as cattle and horses. Oil and gas production have provided important financial underpinning since the 1930s.

Like other ranches on the Great Plains, the King Ranch started as a cattle operation that needed skillful cowhands riding good-minded, durable horses. Since its founding, both cattle and horses have evolved: The King Ranch was instrumental in producing not only the “sorrel” strain of Quarter Horse but the first new breed of beef cattle in the United

States, the Santa Gertrudis. The King Ranch is also the birthplace of Texas game conservation, and its primary focus today is stewardship of the land viewed as an ecosystem, not merely as a cattle ranch or a moneymaking agricultural conglomerate.

Today’s buzzword is “sustainability,” but already in the 1940s famed ecologist Aldo Leopold could declare that the King Ranch represented “one of the best jobs of wildlife restoration on the continent.” It needed restoration because unregulated and often careless hunting had seriously depleted game animals and birds that had originally been abundant in South Texas.

Captain Richard King founded the ranch, but it was a younger relative by marriage, Caesar Kleberg, who became recognized by the Texas Legislature as “the father of Texas wildlife conservation.” During the teens of the last century, he began by enforcing strict hunting rules. He oversaw the restoration of white-tailed deer, turkey and bobwhite quail, and in 1924, he released rare and wily Nilgai ante-lope from southern Asia on the Texas range. In the 1930s, Caesar convinced his nephew Bob Kleberg, Jr., to hire

Val Lehmann as one of the first wildlife biologists to work for a private ranch. Lehmann observed King Ranch had “the desire to do everything possible to increase wildlife as long as practices did not interfere with normal livestock operations.”

Caesar Kleberg passed away in 1946, in his will creating a foundation for wildlife conservation which today is part of Texas A&M University.

The foundation supports an array of wildlife research projects focusing on ecology, game management and best practices in ranchland management in South Texas.

The feeling that the flora and fauna of South Texas deserves special respect goes back, however, beyond Caesar Kleberg’s time. More than a century and a half ago in 1853, riverboat captain Richard King bought a large tract along Santa Gertrudis Creek about 100 miles south of Corpus Christi, not only because he wanted to get into the cattle business and needed good grazing grounds, but also because he had fallen in love with the Wild Horse Desert.

From their first primitive cow camp on Santa Gertrudis Creek, King and partner Gideon K. Lewis marveled every evening as deer, javelinas, feral pigs, cougars, coatis, alligators, bobcats and large herds of mustangs came down to drink. Golden eagles, whitetailed hawks, black-bellied tree ducks and snow geese circled overhead as gangs of wild turkeys gabbled across the ground. Coveys of bobwhite quail whistled up from thickets; pygmyowls peeped out from holes in cactus trunks; and a new and different songbird, seedeater, hummingbird or thrush seemed to appear at every turn. Like several other big Texas ranches reviewed in our last issue (“The End of the Open Range,” EQUUS 498), the King Ranch lies on the Central Flyway, a major bird migration route. Some 370 species have been sighted there, many of which, like the crested caracara, great kiskadee, green jay and tropical parula, are primarily Central or South American and rarely seen north of the Rio Grande. King Ranch coastal marshland forms crucial habitat for the sandhill crane and its endangered cousin, the whooping crane.

By 1860, Lewis was dead; King bought his share and partnered up with fellow ship captain Mifflin

Kenedy and investor Charles Stillman. Neighboring spreads were occupied by other ranchers whom King called friends---both Mexicans who managed to hold on to their Spanish land grants and other Anglo families including the Dursts, Armstrongs and Easts.

Over the succeeding 166 years, there have been numerous marriages between these families, and generations of their descendants have cherished the flora and fauna of the “Nueces Strip,” the land that lies between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande Valley. Today, the King Ranch, Kenedy’s huge La Parra Ranch and the Armstrong Ranch all welcome hunters and fishermen while maintaining their long-standing commitment to pasture and range management.

Despite its vastness, the King Ranch stands out not so much for size as for enterprise.

ETTA AND THE CAPTAIN

The King Ranch story begins before the Civil War; opinions concerning King and his business associates are varied. At one end of the spectrum there is starry-eyed admiration for a

visionary entrepreneur who had the intelligence---coupled with sufficient humility---to hire expertise whenever and wherever needed. At the other end of the spectrum, we have modern historians outraged by the class distinctions and outright racism implicit in the old system of patronage

that King represented, a system not very different from slave ownership.

The truth, I believe, lies somewhere in between and requires a grasp of 19th-century Southern social norms. There were few laws then to prevent profiteering, and slavery was still the norm. People of color, whether

Mission Indians, Negroes or Mexicans, expected to live apart from Whites and yet work for them. In turn, Whites extended patronage and the best of them, including King, were generous within limits.

Both before and after the Civil War, the shipping company run by King, Kenedy and Stillman held a virtual monopoly on cotton transport from Gulf ports in Louisiana to Matamoros at the mouth of the Rio Grande, so by the time King first considered getting into cattle ranching, he was already fairly well off. Orphaned as a toddler, he had no meaningful family ties. He ran away from the confinement of apprenticeship and schooling in favor of an open-air life on the deck of a stern-wheeler. He earned his pilot’s license while still a teenager and captained both smaller boats that plied Gulf coastal rivers and larger transporters that cruised the Gulf Coast between Florida and Mexico. Riverboats took King to many adventures: During Zachary Taylor’s campaigns of the Mexican-American War, he worked for the Union as a munitions transporter, and he then joined the Confederacy during the Civil War as a blockade-runner.

Crude in manner and nearly illiterate, King nonetheless was a fair-minded man with an appreciation for the finer things. Ports such as Brownsville, Matamoros and Laredo were regular stops, Mexican hidalgos were trading partners, and King

became fluent in Spanish. He first saw the ocean of rippling grass near Santa Gertrudis creek on a rare ride north from Brownsville to attend a fair in Corpus Christi. Much more comfortable on the deck of a ship than on the back of a horse, King learned ranching entirely from other men, beginning with “Legs” Lewis who, like many other Anglo men who worked with and for King, had been a Texas Ranger.

Undoubtedly the finest of the “finer things” that caught King’s eye during this period was the daughter of a Presbyterian missionary, one Henrietta Maria Morse Chamberlain. They met because her father, assigned to work in Brownsville, was unable to find suitable housing for his family and so rented rooms on a docked paddlewheeler. Strong women form a key part of King Ranch history, and the intelligent, cultured, outspoken and steel-willed Henrietta set the mold for all who were to follow.

King courted her for several years; she worked to improve his reading, writing, speech and habits and what emerged was a very handsome and capable couple. He called her “Etta” and she called him “Captain” and together, they founded a dynasty. Shortly before their marriage in 1854, Henrietta wrote in her diary: “Today we went riding together on the Wild Horse Desert, and we were so happy.” It isn’t a far stretch to imagine them riding along the dusty banks of a winding arroyo, their horses’ hooves falling together in time. Holding hands, the tapaderos on their stirrups bumping, Henrietta taught the Captain the words to an old hymn that would set the tone for all their time together:

My life flows on in endless song; Above earth’s lamentations,

I hear the sweet, tho’ far-off hymn That hails a new creation;

Thro’ all the tumult and the strife I hear its music ringing;

It finds an echo in my soul—

How can I keep from singing?

WHOSE LAND?

By the time he married Henrietta, Richard King was already a ranch owner. On July 25, 1853, he completed his first land purchase, a Mexican land grant called Rinc—n de Santa Gertrudis, which he obtained from the heirs of Juan Mendiola. The grant consisted of about 15,500 acres and King paid $300 for it---less than two cents per acre. It might be tempting to use the cheap purchase price as evidence that King was embarking on a career as a ruthless land baron. On the deed of record appear the seals of all the heirs of Juan Mendiola. There is no evidence to say that their consent to sell was coerced, but it is fair to say that their decision was a product of the times, and it is also fair to say that King was alert to the business possibilities inherent in an unstable political climate.

The Nueces Strip---the land between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande where the King Ranch now lies---had been contested for decades. The Mexican War of Independence from Spain (1810-1821) was followed almost immediately by the creation of the Republic of Texas (1836), when thousands of Anglo-Americans flooded into Texas. They didn’t speak Spanish and they didn’t usually cotton to Mexico’s culture or people. Then the Mexican--American War (1846-1848) moved the international border from the Nueces south to the Rio Grande and suddenly, by legal fiat, numerous Mexican landowners became Mexican-Americans.

This made it a very dangerous time for them, or for any person of color. Tensions were high because there were cattle rustlers and horse thieves operating from both sides of the border. Many native tribes of northern Mexico and west Texas, including the Lipan Apaches, Karankawas and Comanches, were hostile--frighteningly aggressive warriors who stole livestock and crops, killed men and abducted women and girls. As a

result, some Anglo-Americans thought nothing of shooting “stray” Mexicans, Indians or Negroes on sight.

Besides this, the conditions for ranching were very difficult. The nearimpossibility of developing stable, profitable ranches had been recognized since the earliest Mexican expeditions to Texas in the 1680s. Despite repeated and well-funded efforts by the Spanish Crown and the Mexican government to plant colonies, few thrived. Before the cheap availability of round-wire and barbed wire, which made pasture management as well as selective breeding possible, livestock had to be kept on open range. This inevitably meant strays---many mesteYos of both cattle and horse kind. Cattle were raised in this era primarily for hides and tallow, which could be quite profitable, but an enormous amount of manpower first had to be expended to round the animals up. While there was plenty of grass, surface water was almost always insufficient. King’s sonin-law Robert Kleberg, Sr., remarked later, “where I have grass, I lack water, and where I have water, I lack grass.” As historian Robert Denhardt observed, “acquiring [the Santa Gertrudis] proved much easier than ranching it, as the previous owners had discovered.”

Denhardt continues, “It is only natural that a man who buys 600,000 acres of land is going to become something of a legend in his time.” King was labeled a robber baron on more than one occasion, but he endeavored to play fair. The rightminded and kind Henrietta almost certainly influenced her husband, but it was also in King’s best interest to follow the law, for there is no guarantee of land ownership that can equal a clean title. Early on, King had been burned by a sharper who sold him bogus title to part of Padre Island, and after that he saw to it that all his purchases were handled by lawyers. That they were competent does not make them unscrupulous; King had money to spend and many Mexican owners wanted out. After Santa Gertrudis, King went on to purchase some 60 additional tracts of land, and records show that he often paid for the same parcel several times over before all claimants were satisfied.

In the beginning King borrowed money from Lewis, Stillman, Kenedy and others. They were glad to make the investment because they knew King would work hard to return it with increase. In his history of the King Ranch, Tom Lea observes that “King proved to be no absentee silent partner. Instead, he was absent more and more from the river, devoting

himself to the nascent rancho. Its problems lured him. Its rough life pleased him. He took hold of it shortly after its inception.”

And it also took hold of him. One of King’s first moves was to build reservoirs where livestock could water. This was land engineering that the Mexican government had not undertaken, yet it was obviously necessary and proved vital to success. King’s reservoirs were dug by Mexican laborers wielding picks and shovels. Dirt was hauled away bundled in cowhides dragged behind their horses. King’s biggest construction was the Tranquitas Dam on a tributary to Santa Gertrudis Creek. Tranquitas Lake, today a prime fishing locale, became the only place between the Nueces and the Arroyo Colorado where large herds of horses or cattle could find water in any month of the year.

RAIDS AND REVERSALS

King married Henrietta nearly a decade before the outbreak of the Civil War, and by 1863 they already had four children. During the war King was often absent from their home---captaining speedy paddlewheel steamers specifically designed to outmaneuver and outrun the Union blockade of southern ports that had been imposed by President Lincoln. King helped the Confederacy in every way he could; in addition to selling cattle for food, the King Ranch was a supply point for overland caravans carrying contraband Confederate goods to Mexico. The so-called “Cotton Road” operated by both land and sea, and King profited from ferrying cotton, clothing, shoes, food and, above all else, arms and munitions. Mexican friends helped. In 1862 King’s business partner Francisco Yturria took over temporary ownership of all King’s ships, registering them under his own name as a Mexican citizen. Because Mexico was neutral during the Civil War, Union captains could not stop King’s Mexican-flagged ships.

Union commanders knew all about this and were frustrated by it. They advanced on Brownsville in early November of 1863 and captured the city, crimping Cotton Road trade. Shortly before Christmas of 1863, Union Captain James Speed headed for the King Ranch. King was warned ahead of time; he fled to Matamoros, leaving Henrietta (then pregnant with their fifth child) in the care of her father and trusted ranch hand Francisco Alvarado. As the cavalry galloped through the gate, Alvarado

ran outside---apparently to explain that there were women and children in the house---and was shot dead at Henrietta’s feet. The troops ransacked the house searching for King, then left taking a herd of cattle and a dozen ranch hands as prisoners. Speed warned Henrietta’s father, Hiram Chamberlain, “You tell King that if one bale of cotton is carried away from here or burned, I will hold him responsible with his life.” King remained in Matamoros to the end of the War, working the cotton trade from there. He did not rejoin Henrietta until 1865 when his request for amnesty from President Johnson was approved, along with similar requests by thousands of other Southerners.

THE INDISPENSABLE KINE„OS

Who were the brave and loyal ranch hands who defended Henrietta King? They were Mexicans---Tejanos if you will---who called themselves “KineYos” (which in Spanish means “King’s men”). Their loyalty is understandable when you know something about

their history. Absolutely without question, the King Ranch would never have pulled through hard times nor prospered so greatly when times were good had it not been for the KineYos.

The decade leading up to the Civil War was generally prosperous, and Captain King had plenty of cash on hand to buy livestock. In that early period, the King Ranch did not specialize; indeed they were glad to stock up on ganado of any sort since they had both the Tranquitas Dam and plenty of grass. (“Ganado” is a Spanish term meaning “livestock that increases” and may refer to cattle, horses, mules, sheep or goats.) Accordingly, the Captain went on a buying spree, and word soon got around in Mexican communities on both sides of the Rio Grande that King would pay good money for anything that looked sound enough to walk.

On one of these buying trips,

King came to a small village south of Camargo in the Mexican province of Tamaulipas, just over the border. There he bought all the available cattle. Then, Denhardt continues, “in a master stroke, [King] showed the breadth of vision for which he was to become famous---and thereby forestalled any future labor shortage on the ranch.” As the story goes, after purchasing the cattle and driving them across the river, the thought struck King that although he had paid a fair price, he had deprived the villagers, who were expert vaqueros, of their means of livelihood. I’m certain that the voice King heard inside his head in that hour was Henrietta’s. Calling to a couple of his men to accompany him, he rode back to the village. There he called a council and proposed that the entire village come to work for him. He would, he said, provide houses, food, clothing and a salary in exchange for work.

A white-tailed hawk wheeling overhead might have puzzled over the dust cloud that rose to mark the exodus of King’s people: Men and women, children and the aged splashed across the Rio Grande and then walked long, dusty miles deep into Texas. Men and boys on mustangs, Cayuses or mules; thin, rough-coated village dogs, tongues lolling out as they trotted to either side; a milk cow or two driven along by barefoot boys with sticks; women and children mounted on burros; still other burros bearing balanced paneras filled with fruit, yams, bread or onions; the aged in heavy, woodenwheeled, ox-drawn carretas, reclining among piled household goods and squawking chickens.

In many ways, the King Ranch resembled the old Mexican hacienda in that every necessary item was made on site. It was not just a question of obtaining vaqueros who could break caballos and handle cattle.

The ranch required hide tanners and candle makers; butchers and cooks; fishermen and hunters; weavers and basketmakers; farriers, fence builders, gardeners, cooks, housekeepers, tailors, plowmen, wagon drivers, wheelwrights, millers, carpenters, cow milkers, cheese-makers, cobblers, saddle makers---the list is almost endless. The Spanish word “hacienda” means “a place where things are made” or “a place of enterprise” and the KineYos were the ones who made it happen.

More than seven generations later, KineYos continue to work for the

King Ranch. King and his heirs and successors did more than keep their word, not only meeting the basic needs of the KineYo families but establishing schools for them and their children and seeing to it that they received medical care and had means of support in their old age.

In 2018 Daniel Morales, a fourthgeneration KineYo, spoke at the dedication of a KineYos Trail marker erected in downtown Kingsville. As reported in the Kingsville Record and Bishop News, he said, “Richard King worked hard on the ranch with these vaqueros and relied on their expert knowledge of cattle, and [he] respected and admired them…. 165 years and many generations later, KineYo descendants are still working for the same ranch. I can’t think of a company in existence today where generations of families worked and continue to work for the same company.” He concluded by quoting from Richard M.

Kleberg’s two-volume history of the ranch: “To all these men, King’s men for short, truly King’s men; this book is dedicated in recognition of what this ranch owes them.”

Several historians have noted that while there were plenty of jobs for KineYos, higher “white collar” managerial positions were generally closed to them. An exception to this was Lauro Cavazos, Sr., who managed the Santa Gertrudis cattle division in the 1950s and 1960s under Robert J. (Bob) Kleberg, Jr., and Richard M.

(Dick) Kleberg.

A decade later, Lauro Cavazos, Jr., became the first Hispanic in the history of the United States to be appointed to the Cabinet, as Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan. Born on the King Ranch and educated in a tworoom schoolhouse built by Henrietta King, he went on to earn advanced degrees, becoming dean of the

Tufts University School of Medicine and president of Texas Tech. In his memoirs, Cavazos recounts the childhood influences that informed his “policies of inclusion” while in office. He tells of Christmas parties, cattle work and schooling on the King Ranch and emphasizes the high value his parents placed on education.

Cavazos’ story continues to inspire Mexican-Americans and, in particular, has had the effect of shattering the

“taco ceiling” at King Ranch Corporate headquarters. After King’s death in 1885 and the death of Henrietta in 1925, control passed to their daughter Alice and husband Robert Kleberg, Sr., and then to their son, Robert Kleberg, Jr., Son-in-law James Clement took over as CEO in 1974. He was succeeded In 1988 by Darwin Smith who was the first head who was not related to Richard King either by blood or by marriage. This began the transition to a professionally managed but still familyowned enterprise, and it meant that, for the first time, a King Ranch vaquero ---whether KineYo or Anglo---was not just a cowboy, but an employee entitled to equal opportunity.

ANGLO-AMERICAN HORSES IN TEXAS

In 1854 King paid $250 for a gray and $300 for a bay, both stallions and both “American-bred”---“American,” that is, to distinguish them from “Mexican” or “mustang.” Although these horses came from Kentucky, Tennessee or Missouri, they were not Billys or Rondos, the immediate precursors of Quarter Horses that we have reviewed in the last several installments of this series, because those horses came later. There were very few “short horse” breeders in

Texas at this early date: Jones Greene and Middleton Perry (Steel Dust),

Jack Batchler (Shiloh), Frank Lilly (Paisana) and Alfred Bailes (Bailes Brown Dick). In any case King was not looking for a specialty strain but rather a type I have previously termed the “Mountain Horse,” derivative of the old easy-gaited, swift and hardy strain of Thoroughbred so admired by John Cocke and Andrew Jackson

(see “America’s Major Horse Breeds Emerge,” EQUUS 473). King was after size, strength, easy saddling qualities, soundness, handsome appearance, good-mindedness and smooth gaits. In November of 1854, King bought a sorrel stallion named Whirlpool. The horse’s very high price tag of $600 indicates that he was probably a Morgan. Before the end of 1854, King bought six more American stallions or geldings and one mare for a total of $970.

“When one realizes that [King] had paid only $300 for the Santa Gertrudis ranch, the value he placed on good horseflesh becomes obvious,” observes Denhardt. Like William Anson, the son of a British earl who came to Texas in the 1890s (see “Hard Times Bring Big Changes,” EQUUS 496), King was not a skillful rider and certainly had no roping skills. To such a man the ability of the Mexican vaquero to rope a heavy bull and bring it to its knees while mounted on a horse weighing only two-thirds as much was a marvel. Like Anson and nearly every other Anglo rancher, King sought to solve the problem of roping big bulls by bringing in large, heavy horses.

As on the contemporary Miller and Lux properties in California, at the King Ranch class distinctions were reflected in horseflesh: family members and Anglo managers were mounted upon Morgans or Mountain Horses or occasionally on grade Thoroughbreds. Mestizo line-bosses were provided with Cayuses, crosses of any of the above on mustang mares; and ordinary vaqueros rode tamed mustangs. Neither Billys nor Quarter Horses entered the picture at King Ranch until long after the Captain’s death.

BARBED WIRE BY THE BOXCAR

Although he let his lawyers wangle the nuts and bolts of land purchases, it was still sometimes necessary for King himself to appear in court. On one such occasion in 1881, he became so impressed with the knowledge and thoroughness of one of the opposing lawyers that after the proceedings were over he invited the young man to come work for him. That was Robert Kleberg, Sr., who in 1886 married the Captain’s youngest daughter, Alice Gertrudis King. The Captain had passed away the year before, so his lifelong friend and partner Mifflin Kenedy traveled by wagon from the La Parra to the Santa Gertrudis to give the bride away.

Shortly thereafter, Henrietta King ---who outlived her husband by four

decades---asked Robert to help her run the ranch. Few family partnerships have ever worked out better, and the two of them set out immediately to innovate and improve. One of the Captain’s cardinal rules had been “never let go of land,” but Henrietta deeded large chunks to her children Richard, Jr., and Nettie and sold other parcels, which reduced the size of the ranch but also helped to pay off debts and lighten the tax burden. She also deeded the ground on which the city of Kingsville is built. The Captain had been interested in bringing in railroad lines (which still run parallel to U.S. Routes 281 and 77) for livestock transport, and Henrietta and Robert Kleberg built miles of tracks south to Brownsville and northward past Alice, the town named in honor of Robert’s wife. The primary purpose of the railroads promoted by the Kings and Klebergs was to take cattle, horses and mules away to be sold, but the old steam locomotives also hauled in many necessary commodities, especially lumber, which was always in short supply.

Livestock improvement depends upon selective breeding, and that in turn requires that bulls and stallions breed only those cows and mares that have been selected for them. On ranches, what makes this possible is perimeter fencing, which closes off

open range, then cross-fencing, which creates paddocks where each elite bull or stallion can serve his band of cows or mares. King and Kenedy dissolved their long-standing business partnership in 1868 and Kenedy immediately began to erect perimeter fencing on the La Parra.

At great expense, he imported posts and planks. By contrast, the

King Ranch went with barbed wire. As reviewed in our last installment, barbed wire of modern type had been invented in 1874 by Joseph Glidden, and King was among the first to purchase it by the boxcar-load from Glidden’s Illinois factory. Thousands of miles of wire were required, and many a KineYo employed to “ride fence” mounted himself upon an easy-gaited ambler to be able to cover more miles in less time and in greater comfort. These horses were not Quarter Horses---the breed did not yet exist---but some contributed to their ancestry, and to this day “travellin’ hosses” still crop up in Quarter Horse herds, especially in South Texas.

Barbed wire did not, however, prove ideal, and over time, the Klebergs began to consider alternatives. In particular, they and many other ranchers learned barbed wire and horses do not mix; when they get tangled in it, the injuries to horses’ limbs are usually serious, almost always disfiguring and sometimes permanently crippling. As the King Ranch horse breeding program began to flourish in the 1940s, losses or damage due to barbed wire became intolerable. Already during the 1920s, injuries had prompted a shift to round wire for the horse paddocks. Then, looking for even better alternatives, in the 1930s the ranch began experimenting with various types of wire mesh. Finally in the 1950s the Klebergs held a contest for someone to create wire mesh fencing that would meet their requirements for cost, durability, ease of handling and safety. The winner was a hardware company that produced a smooth-wire mesh with holes large enough for a horse to put his hoof through but also to take it out. The entire King Ranch was refitted and today the distinctive mesh fencing can be seen along miles of Texas highway and separating all paddocks.

ARTESIAN WATER AND TEXAS TEA

Another crucial need was water; in King’s time the Tranquitas Dam had been a boon but as the ranch grew, both in terms of acreage and livestock numbers, more watering places were urgently needed. In about 1890 Robert Kleberg, Sr., began consulting with water-well geologists and researching the purchase of drilling equipment. At the time, mapping of underground aquifers had not yet been undertaken, nor was it understood that pools of oil existing underground are almost always capped by an even larger underground pool of water. Kleberg and other landowners had to learn to drill no deeper than the water stratum, or else they would have a “gusher” of another sort on their hands. The Beverly Hillbillies might have called it Black Gold or Texas Tea, but to ranchers before about 1915 striking oil was a nuisance. There was little market for the tarry black stuff; what they desperately wanted was water. The first time Kleberg succeeded in drilling a productive water well was in 1899; he wrote in his journal, “I shed tears today” ---tears of relief as well as of gratitude, because wells were expensive to drill, and Kleberg needed to prove to Henrietta that this approach to solving their water problems would work. Within the next two decades, Kleberg and Henrietta drilled hundreds of water wells on the King Ranch and they installed large cement watering tanks---still in use today---every mile along every trail on the ranch that was used to move cattle.

It was some time before oil drilling

proved to be as productive. After 1915 oil became valuable, and Kleberg negotiated with the Humble Oil and Refining Co. to drill some test holes. They all proved to be “dusters.” Nonetheless, the agreement with Humble assisted Henrietta in clearing up the last of the Captain’s debts and in recovering full control of parts of the ranch that had been mortgaged.

In 1933 Kleberg and Humble reached a new agreement: the largest oil lease ever negotiated. Thanks to improvements in geologic mapping and in drilling technique, the first successful oil well on the King Ranch was completed in 1939. By 1947 there were 390 producing oil wells; by 1953 that number had grown to 650. In the 1950s Humble Oil constructed a refinery in Kingsville. Later, Humble consolidated with Standard Oil and Esso to emerge as ExxonMobil, but the original lease remains in force today, after generating over a billion dollars in revenue for the King Ranch. In 1980 a subsidiary, King Ranch

Oil and Gas, was formed to conduct exploration and production in five states and the Gulf of Mexico. Eight years later the company sold its Louisiana and Oklahoma holdings for more than $40 million. In 1992 King Ranch Oil was one of several companies to discover natural gas off the coast of Louisiana, and oil and gas production continues to underwrite cattle and horse production on the ranch.

TEXAS FEVER AND PEDIGREED CATTLE

“Texas fever,” today known as piroplasmosis or babesiosis, was a huge problem during the 19th century for all Texas ranchers hoping

to drive their cattle north for sale. Texas fever produces malaria-like signs and greatly weakens cattle. A single infected steer can expose nearby animals to the disease, and ranchers in Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado mounted armed posses to stop Texas cattle from coming near their herds. King Ranch cattle drives began in 1869, and the problem remained severe until the late 1880s when definitive research on Texas fever was finally carried out. Theobald Smith, MD, proved that the disease is caused by a protozoan parasite that is transmitted by bloodsucking ticks. Robert Kleberg, Sr., designed the first cattle-dipping vats and had them installed and in use at the King Ranch by 1891. He shared the design and encouraged his neighbors to fill the vats with a blue anile dye that would kill the ticks.

As time went on, it became more and more worthwhile to take good care of the cattle and to have superior cattle to take care of. Kleberg was interested in upgrading from longhorns, especially as market demand shifted from leather and candlewax to beef. In the early years of the 20th century, there were two good choices: Shorthorns and Herefords (also called “Whitefaces”). Although the American Shorthorn Association was founded in 1872, most bulls were concentrated on farms in Maryland and other Eastern seaboard states.

The first imports of Herefords to the United States were made about 1817 by politician and Thoroughbred breeder Henry Clay, who brought them to his Kentucky estate. Larger importations began in the 1840s but neither the Shorthorn nor the Hereford were common in Texas before about 1895. Kleberg was among the first to buy some of both and to try crossbreeding them with longhorns.

One problem with both of the British breeds was lack of tolerance to the hot, humid South Texas summer. To solve this, Kleberg turned to Brahmans. Despite its name, the Brahman is an American invention, created in the 1880s by crossing four different Indian cattle breeds. Humped and with long, drooping ears, they are adapted to humid heat, don’t sunburn, calve easily, can walk long distances and show excellent parasite resistance. They are larger and meatier than longhorns and far more docile.

Then Kleberg had the idea of crossing Brahmans with Shorthorns, and the results were encouraging; in 1920 Monkey, a 3/8ths Brahman and 5/8ths Shorthorn bull representing the best qualities of both breeds was calved on the ranch. He became the foundation sire for the Santa Gertrudis breed, which was later developed and perfected by Robert Kleberg, Sr.’s younger son, Robert Kleberg, Jr.

THE KING RANCH SORREL HORSE

As to horses, Kleberg considered Thoroughbreds the best, but he had no interest in racing them. Historian Denhardt observes, “It should be remembered that when Bob Kleberg,

Sr., started the cow-horse program the aim was not the production of a superior family of Quarter Horses; his main objective was to develop a better cow horse for use on the ranch.” For the purpose of creating useful ranch horses, he sought animals that were substantial and sound-footed, and they might have belonged to any breed. Over time, however, like William Anson (see “Hard Times Bring Big Changes,” EQUUS 496), Kleberg found that he liked Billys. He was the first King Ranch manager to use them extensively. In the teens of the century he began buying stallions and broodmares from neighbor Ott Adams of Alice. Adams stood Little Joe, a Quarter Horse foundation stallion whose pedigree harks back to Peter McCue, Sykes Rondo, Old Billy and Traveler (see “Change on the Horizon,” EQUUS 493). He also bought horses from George Clegg, who had acquired the Watkins-Anson stallion Hickory Bill. Kleberg listened to the opinions of his top Kineño hands as to which colts and fillies born on the ranch should be gelded or sold out, and which should be retained in their breeding program.

The expert opinion of the Kineños proved crucially important in one particular instance, because the King Ranch did not breed its foundation stallion. In 1915, Kleberg paid $125 for a sorrel colt and his dam that were led over for inspection by George

Clegg. The colt grew up in a King Ranch pasture and nobody paid much attention to him until he was broken in and tried. In fact he had been ridden and used as a stallion for a number of years before Kleberg called for a survey of the pasture stallions to determine which were producing the best ranch horses. The Kineños called the horse “El Alazán” but by the time

The aim of the King Ranch cow-horse program was not the production of a superior family of Quarter Horses; the main objective was to develop a better cow horse for use on the ranch.

he was selected as foundation stallion for the horse breeding program, he was “El Alazán Viejo”---“The Old Sorrel.” Long-backed, the reddishorange stallion had an easy-riding trot and smooth canter. With powerful hindquarters, he had the explosive acceleration characteristic of his Billy ancestors. He had “cow sense,” loved cutting, and could turn on a dime. Good-minded and gentle, he was not only easy to handle but exhibited great willingness to go on working when other horses gave up or wore out. With a well-set neck and a light mouth, the Kineños considered him the best stallion on the ranch.

The Old Sorrel’s sire was George Clegg’s Hickory Bill, who had originally been bred by the Watkins family of Illinois and then raised and used by William Anson. Unfortunately, the Old Sorrel’s dam’s name and pedigree are not specifically known. Apparently in about 1900 Clegg acquired some mares that had belonged to a dentist named Rose. Rose had bought them out of Kentucky and shipped them to his ranch in Mexico, where they were turned out on open range. There they lost their individual identities. Eventually Rose became “horse poor” and decided to sell his remuda. Clegg bought four of the older mares and bred them to Hickory Bill; one of them was the dam of the Old Sorrel.

Kleberg occasionally bought other groups of “unknown” but good-quality mares. His cousin Caesar Kleberg---the range conservation man---was also an expert rider and Kleberg respected his opinion on horseflesh. In about 1910 a man named Sam Lazarus telephoned the ranch to offer Kleberg a group of Thoroughbred mares. As Denhardt tells the tale, Kleberg explained that the ranch wasn’t in the racing business and wouldn’t have time or facilities to keep pampered racehorses. Lazarus persisted until Kleberg agreed to send Caesar to look over his herd.

It was immediately apparent that the horses were of superb quality but Caesar again felt compelled to explain that the ranch already had several thousand cow horses, as well as good harness and wagon horses. Lazarus’ motive for selling his livestock was bitterness; he had been in the racing business but when the sport was outlawed in

Texas at the turn of the century, he had been forced to ship his horses and trainers to Kentucky where he could not directly supervise them. Repeatedly, he said, he had been cheated when races were fixed, so that mysteriously his entries broke badly or ran slow. He cared about his mares and was convinced that the King Ranch should be their retirement home. So he made Caesar Kleberg a deal that could not be refused: selling price was to be $100 per head at a time when an ordinary nag went for $100.

Lazarus set only one condition: He did not want the horses registered or raced. That was no problem, and Caesar made arrangements to have the entire herd shipped to the ranch where they proved to be an excellent base for Robert Kleberg, Sr.’s, cow-horse breeding program. In our next installment we will follow the story of the King Ranch horses to its completion by looking in detail at both the process and the results of Robert Kleberg, Jr.’s, scientific breeding program.

POSTSCRIPT: THE PASSING OF THE QUEEN

Henrietta Chamberlain King lived to be 93 years old before passing in 1925. She deeded control of the majority of King Ranch properties to Alice and her husband Robert Kleberg, Sr., in acknowledgement of their friendship and devotion to her in her old age.

Mentally sharp and iron-willed, yet moral and kind, Henrietta was liked and respected by all who knew her. The Kineños called her “La Reina del Rancho,” and when they learned that she had passed away 200 of them, all wearing white hats, rode to her funeral. Each man’s horse bore the distinctive brown-and-cream King Ranch wool saddle blanket with the Running-W logo woven in. As her coffin was lowered into the ground, one after another the vaqueros circled the grave, and each tipped his hat as if to say “Adios. Go with God”

Coming next: Sons of the

Old Sorrel

The King Ranch foundation stallion Old Sorrel was good-minded and gentle. He was not only easy to handle but exhibited great willingness to go on working when other horses gave up and wore out.

Acknowledgements: The author thanks Lisa Neely, King Ranch archivist and James Clement III, current head of the King Ranch horse breeding program, for their assistance in preparing this article.