Customer Reviews

Xit Ranch Of Texas, And Early Days Of The Llano Estacado

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The XIT ranch was a 3,000,000 acre ranch in Northwest Texas that was created in payment for building the Texas state capital building. This, in itself, is a fascinating story. A huge tract, covering parts of ten counties and spanning much of the western panhandle of Texas, was given in payment by a cash-poor state in the wake of the Civil War. The ranch became a major player in the ranch culture of the southwest as well as on the cow trails from Texas to Montana.

Hailey documents the history of the ranch through first hand interviews with people directly associated with the ranch as well as using historical documents. The book was originally published in the 1920s, when many of the workers were still alive. Their stories provide a powerful antidote to the image of cowboys as gunslingers and romantic heroes, as portrayed by Hollywood. Their lives were intensely difficult as they worked to overcome a cruel and unforgiving environment plagued by drought, fire, ne'er-do-wells, and wolves.

This book is a great read and highly recommended.

Another excellent book by Mr Haley about the settling/civilization of the Texas panhandle and the men who made it their lifes work.Explains alot of how the longhorns were phased out and the English bloodlines were introduced into the country. My only issue was that the book was smaller and the font's were smaller than his book about Charles Goodnight which was published earlier.

J. Evetts Haley is a historian of the school that believed the facts of history were worthy of accurate historical narrative. This book is masterful: Haley laboriously documents the sources that he needed, some of them obscure and in dusty minutes, but the XIT ranch fills the Texas Panhandle's early history with a stirring and memorable quality seldom accorded modern history writing.
Haley's thesis is: The XIT history as told from original sources. Unlike most modern historians, who propound a thesis that is alien to the subject, Haley lets the materials of the XIT guide his writing. I heartily commend this book to the serious reader.
I learned why the XIT was named, the meaning of "Lobo" and a myraid of other interesting facts.
Longdrycreek Ranch, Shamrock, Texas