Barbecue Campbell and the XIT

On November 2, 1912 the last herd of cattle on the famous XIT ranch was sold. It was but a brief 27 years earlier, on July 1, 1885 that the first herd of Texas Longhorns were brought to the sprawling, three million acre ranch.

During those twenty-seven years Texas could rightfully boast of having the largest cattle ranch in the world. The birth of the XIT began in 1879 when the Sixteenth Texas Legislature designated a three million acre parcel of land to be sold for the purpose of raising the necessary funds to finance the construction of the state's capitol building. The designated land stretched for more than 200 miles along the New Mexico border of the Texas Panhandle.

The original long-range plan became a matter of urgency when in November of 1881 the existing Texas capitol building was destroyed by fire. So, in early 1882, the Capitol Board signed a contract with Mathias Schnell of Rock Island, Illinois to design and build what would then be the largest capitol building in America. The Texas capitol building would be even larger and taller than the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. The contract with Schnell exchanged the three million acres of the Texas Panhandle, at $1.00 per acre, for a building that would end up costing $3,744,630.60 when completed in April of 1888. The State of Texas would pay for the cost overrun.

Schnell sold his interest in the land to the Taylor, Babcock and Company of Chicago and they in turn organized the Capitol Syndicate to manage the future sales of the land and its interim operations. A survey and inspection of the land, which took more than a month to complete, verified that the land descriptions in regard to soil conditions, grasslands, available water, timber and natural shelter were accurate.

At that time the cattle industry was booming and the recommendation from the survey was that the entire area should be fenced and immediately stocked with cattle. Brothers Charles and John Farwell were among the leading investors of the Capitol Syndicate and knew of potential investors in Europe. In 1884, John went to England and was instrumental in establishing the Capitol Freehold Land and Investment Company of London. Farwell returned to the U.S. with nearly $5 million to begin the vast cattle empire's operations.

The organization began the process of dividing the range, then known as The Capitol Syndicate Ranch, into eight separate parcels and building what would eventually be more than 6,000 miles of barbed wire fence.

The first of the eight divisions was the Buffalo Springs division in the north near the Oklahoma border; this division later became the steer pasture. Middlewater was used for the culls and undesirables; Ojo Bravo (Bold Spring) was the prime part of the ranch and it was there that the high-grade cattle were grazed. Rita Blanca was the beef ranch, Escarbada was where the graded cattle were kept, Spring Lake was the breeding pasture and Casas Amarillas (Yellow House) was classed as a general, all purpose range. Each division contained a headquarters and had its own foreman, a number of ranch hands and an adequate remuda. Eventually the main headquarters would be located near Channing, Texas where the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad established a stockyard.

Of course Chicago investors knew little or nothing about ranch management and the Syndicate hired B. H. 'Barbecue' Campbell, a prominent rancher from Kansas, as the first general manager of the company. The Syndicate intended to run cattle until the land was eventually sold off, in smaller parcels, for agriculture and other enterprises. In the meantime Campbell began the process of contracting for cattle, building fence, drilling for water and installing windmills.

Burton Harvey Campbell was born in Randolph, New York in 1829. By the late 1860's B. H. Campbell had established himself as a successful businessman in New York City. After the Civil War, the U. S. Government employed Campbell as an advisor for the Reconstruction of the South. His expert services rendered him the honorary title of "Colonel."

In 1870 Colonel Campbell relocated to a farm in Illinois and experimented extensively in the breeding of livestock. His breeding programs included horses and sheep but his area of expertise focused on cattle. He was involved in the early organization of the American Short Horn Breeders Association.

The early 1880's found Campbell along the Kansas-Oklahoma border where he had established his own ranching operations. His brand, the Bar- B Q, earned him the nickname of "Barbecue". His earliest range was located along the Cherokee Strip, on Medicine Lodge Creek, south of Caldwell, Kansas from where he was forced to relocate after the Secretary of the Interior declared the land off-limits to white settlement, a designation that was soon overturned and resulted in the famous Oklahoma Land Rush. Campbell then leased land from the Creek Indians until 1891 when he moved his operations farther west into Clark County, Kansas.

Somewhere along the way Campbell, well known for his cattle and range management expertise, and the Farwell brothers had become acquainted. Through this acquaintance Campbell was chosen to manage the sprawling Capitol Syndicate Ranch.

By 1885 the ranch was ready to start stocking the range. Campbell contracted with cattlemen in Tom Green, County of central Texas to trail 2,500 head of Longhorns to the Buffalo Springs pasture in Dallam County. Trail boss Abner P. Blocker was in charge of the drive and delivered the herd on the first day of July 1885. Legend has it that it was Blocker who originated the XIT brand when he scratched the letters in the Texas dust with the toe of his boot, creating a brand that would not be easily altered. Others claim that the brand was designed to represent the fact that the range stretched across ten different counties of the Texas Panhandle; Ten In Texas, XIT. Whatever its origin the XIT brand would become known around the globe.

However, B. H. Campbell only lasted two years as foreman. According to western historian J. Evetts Haley the Colonel gained a reputation as a "big-faced, overbearing, loud-mouthed, personally penurious and institutionally extravagant." Campbell was fired from the XIT for having hired a number of cowboys who were in fact outlaws who had a penchant for stealing the cattle that they were hired to protect. Additionally, he was accused of mismanagement in that large numbers of cattle had perished under his watch.

It may be that the Colonel was unfortunate in being the first manager. Among the many 'rules' of the ranch, which included a prohibition of alcohol and gambling, a ranch hand was not permitted to carry a firearm. This proved to be a costly ruling especially during calving season when prairie wolfs would enjoy a bountiful feast of fresh-born calves. The ruling was later changed and cowboys were allowed to carry firearms to shoot the wolves and they were allowed to keep the cash paid for bounties.

Also contributing to the loss of stock was the absence of abundant water. Contracts for wells to be dug and windmills built were often slow in being completed. Cattle would often have to travel for miles to find water and many perished from the scarcity of water. As improvements continued and facilities were completed livestock losses declined and as many as 160,000 cattle roamed the XIT range during it prime. Cattle from the XIT were driven north to the Dakotas and into Wyoming and Montana for summer grazing and returned to Texas in the fall for shipping. However, records indicate that the XIT rarely turned a profit from the cattle operations.

B. H. "Barbecue" Campbell returned to Kansas and settled in the Riverside Addition of Wichita where he commissioned the building of his personal home on the banks of the Little Arkansas River. Known as the Campbell Castle the 9,000 square foot, 28-room, limestone structure was completed in 1888 at the exorbitant price of a whopping $20,000. Campbell called the castle home until 1910. The Colonel's wife died in mid-1907 and the Colonel joined her in death less than a year later in 1908. The estate was left to the Colonel's son Robert who sold the home in 1910.

Two years later, in 1912, the last of the XIT cattle were sold. The empire had slowly dwindled as more and more of the 3 million acres had been sold. By 1929 only 450,000 acres were still under the ownership of the XIT Ranch and as recently as 1963 the last parcel of the famous XIT range was sold.

In the late 1920's the Farwell Estate, established by the brothers Charles and John, commissioned author and historian J. Evetts Haley to write the history of the famous ranch; 'The XIT Ranch of Texas' published in 1929 is that story.

Today, November 2014, in Wichita, Kansas real estate listings show that the Campbell Castle has been reduced to sell for the bargain price of $2.9 million, a mere $100,000 less than three million acres of Texas land in 1879.

M. Timothy Nolting is an award-winning Nebraska columnist and freelance writer. Reach him via e-mail at [email protected]