In this episode, co-host Scott Sosebee gives us an intimate look at the Mallet Ranch, a beacon of the South Plains' history. His latest work, More Than Running Cattle: The Mallet Ranch of the South Plains (TTU Press 2023), weaves a narrative that's as vast as the Texas horizon, detailing the DeVitt family's trials and triumphs on their storied ranch. Scott's publication is a tapestry of ranching life, enriched by Wyman Meinzer's striking photographs.
Find a copy of Scott's books he discusses on this episode at Amazon:
More Than Running Cattle: The Mallet Ranch of the South Plains https://a.co/d/1GA0bgn
Henry C. "Hank" Smith and the Cross B Ranch: The First Stock Operation on the South Plains https://a.co/d/hRwdqr0
In this episode, co-host Scott Sosebee gives us an intimate look at the Mallet Ranch, a beacon of the South Plains' history. His latest work, More Than Running Cattle: The Mallet Ranch of the South Plains (TTU Press 2023), weaves a narrative that's as vast as the Texas horizon, detailing the DeVitt family's trials and triumphs on their storied ranch. Scott's publication is a tapestry of ranching life, enriched by Wyman Meinzer's striking photographs.
Find a copy of Scott's books he discusses on this episode at Amazon:
More Than Running Cattle: The Mallet Ranch of the South Plains https://a.co/d/1GA0bgn
Henry C. "Hank" Smith and the Cross B Ranch: The First Stock Operation on the South Plains https://a.co/d/hRwdqr0
This podcast is not sponsored by. It does not reflect the views of the institutions that employ us. It is solely our thoughts and ideas, based upon our professional training and study of the family.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that explores Texas history before and beyond the Alamo. Not only will we talk Texas history, we'll visit with folks who teach it, write it, support it, and with some who've made it and, of course, all of us who live it and love it. Well, welcome to another edition of Talking Texas History. I'm Gene Price.
Speaker 1:I am Scott Sowsby.
Speaker 2:Scott. Look, we are going to see a lot of new books coming out. We're already seeing new books come out from our presses. You know we talked to Fred Allison last time about my Darling Boys, that new book that he came out with, and you know he's an old friend of ours from Texas Tech. Another old friend of ours from Texas Tech wrote a book that I just got in the mail last week.
Speaker 1:Me too.
Speaker 2:You know what. You may be familiar with this book. It's called More Than Running Cattle A History of the Mallet Ranch. Well, it's the Mallet Ranch of the South Plains, and it's by some fellow named M Scott Sowsby.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it seems to ring a bell. It rings a bell. It rings a bell. I can remember. I can actually remember working on it, that is true. But yes, gene, it is my latest book to come out Just came out from Texas Tech University Press that I'm very proud of working on. It's a result of a somewhat of a collaboration, if you will, between the DH Foundation, which is the foundation established by Christine DeVitt, who was the matriarch, the inheritor of the Mallet Ranch from her father, and then the Helen Jones DeVitt Foundation, both of those in Lubbock. Helen DeVitt Jones is the sister of Christine DeVitt, so they were the two daughters of the founder of the ranch, that of the DeVitt family and also the National Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock. Also, all these were results of grants. From that that they got with them and they had me write this book, which I had a lot of fun writing, I learned. I learned a lot about it, more than more than I knew before.
Speaker 2:Well, I want to just say congratulations on the book coming out in print. I know you've been working on it. I remember I think I went up to Lubbock with you once you did when we were, when you were working on the book, and so I know I know you had a deep interest and and actually let's wanted to give a shout out. You're not the only person who's written on the DeVitt family. In fact, one of our former professors up at Texas Tech University and he was in charge of the Southwest Collection, david Murrah, david Murrah, who was the founder of the DeVitt Foundation, david Murrah also wrote about the DeVitt family.
Speaker 1:Right, it was the first one to write on the DeVitt family, His book Oil Taxes and Cats, which is one of the best titles of a book ever. Probably when you read the book and know about it, you know exactly what he's talking about in oil taxes and cats. Yeah, you know, everywhere I went researching this book and doing this I found David's footprints there already, so I love him. In fact, when I was writing and I would start off said you know, David's done this.
Speaker 1:I'm going to take a different, take a different tone, a different side, and I would be writing and I'd go along and then I'd say, oh, let me look at David's book. Well, he said, I said thanks, that's the same thing. David said I sound just like something he did already. So so yes, there are similarities, there are differences. We had different, you know, we had somewhat different, if you will, approaches. David is more writing about the DeVitt family and the DeVitts themselves, where this book is more about the ranch and the workings of the ranch and how it, and particularly how it, became one of the most valuable single land holding pieces in Texas.
Speaker 2:Well, you know this. This is a really pretty book. It's, it's, it's heavy and it's it. Would you be offended if I said it was a coffee table book?
Speaker 1:No, that's exactly what it was set out to be. To some extent you know a more expanded, more narrative based coffee table book. But yes, and the reason why that, of course what she's talking about is it's the way the book has come out in the format and the shape. But also, you may have heard of Wyman Meinzer, who is at one point he was the great photographer of Texas, I believe he's based in Lubbock very, very well known and very talented photographer.
Speaker 1:Many of this book is full of photographs. There's well over 100 photographs in this book and some of them historic that were come from archives, but some of them are current, contemporary photos of the mallet ranch that Meisner went out and took on this. So you get to look at the ranch as it looks like now. In fact, the cover a lot. The way the cover is because it's so indicative of Ranch lands on the South Plains, because it has a kind of an old dirt road that runs through the middle of the ranch. I've driven on that road with David Murrow, by the way, on that road and it runs off into the horizon and you can just see it disappearing in the sky of blue and it's just that typical flat range perfect cattle country photograph of what you see on the South Plains. The Mallet Ranch for people who don't know is located near Lubbock. It's west of Lubbock, it's in.
Speaker 2:Sundown is the capital right.
Speaker 1:Sundown is the nearest city to the Mallet Ranch. On this. It's not far from Levelland, for example. A lot of it's in Cochran County, a little bit of it is in Lamb County and my mind is just running away the county that level is it in? Hockley County. Most of it is in Hockley County.
Speaker 2:South Hockley.
Speaker 1:County. It's 60,000 acres, a little over 60,000 acres today. At its height it was 81,000 acres of land, which was a. You know, at the time it was established, mallet Ranch was, you know, the South Plains of Texas. We think of that, as you know. We think of maybe far west out of El Paso or, you know, well up into the Panhandle in the last places, as Texas was somewhat occupied, but really it's the South Plains when you talk about things coming out there, although Hank Smith had the first operation on South Plains, who I've written about, of course.
Speaker 2:He's gonna say you know a little bit about him.
Speaker 1:But most of the operations out there were later. They were Smith was in 1878, a lot of them were in the 1880s but the Mallet is not founded by the David family until 1890. The kind of started putting it together in the mid 1890s. On this, david DeVitt who founded the ranch is really an interesting character. You know you always think yourself how much of this do I want to tell? Because I tell the whole story nobody's gonna buy the book and you know I have things to pay for in my life that I like to have. So I want people to buy the book. But David DeVitt is an interesting character because his first life you know in his first life what he did. He was in Brooklyn, new York, and he was a. He was a newspaper reporter and newspaper man before he where he came to Texas. And he came to Texas and settled in central Texas in the roughly Kerville, mason, menard between there and operated a sheep ranch and set up a sheep ranch.
Speaker 2:Scott, let me, let me let me throw a question in here, because I, you know, I lived out in West Texas when to school up a tech with you and and I learned about this. But this is something I think we're getting. You're getting into some things that maybe a lot of people don't know about Texas ranching. First of all, you know you're you're talking about Texas ranching.
Speaker 2:A Texas ranches are really later on in Texas history. A lot of them come about after the Texas revolution, right, you know, you talk about people like the Kings and the Kennedys, with the King Ranch down in South Texas, the first big ranch, but that was a post civil war ranch. And now you're talking about somebody who's coming in from New York, right, not a native Texan who comes in, buys land in the late 19th century, you know, 20 years later on, kind of after or towards the end of the cattle drives, and so this, this is maybe something that people don't understand. And then now you're talking about Kerville and this whole thing. A lot of people don't know this, but one of the big industries in the Texas, cattle and the Texas agriculture and ranching is not cattle but sheep and goats. So you're this, this is a different history, I think, than than most people imagine what Texas ranching is about.
Speaker 1:Well, absolutely, I mean, jean. I mean we, our perception, our popular perception of ranching and everything else. Of course it's been shaped by popular culture and the legend in the myth of cowboys and all this. And this is where you know you're almost always fighting that image when you're writing about Texas ranching. Texas ranching is first and foremost, like you know say to me, listen people it was a business, is what it was. It was a business, it was a way for people to make money and it was an agricultural enterprise is what they did.
Speaker 1:And people like David DeVitt entered into it. And the people he encounters out here, like you know, he runs into a legal, big legal fight that sometimes turned actual fight with the CC slaughter and the, you know, in his ranch and that was adjacent to the mallet ranch. And you think of the things like the, the Espoir Leland and cattle company and the, the Matador in West Texas. These are all business enterprises that were generally owned by, some of them by corporations. You know the Matador, taken over by the Dundee syndicate out of Scotland and run out of that in the 1880s. These were things where people came and this was a way for investors to make money that they set up with.
Speaker 1:So that's not this romantic image. David DeVitt, let's look at him. He owned a ranch. If I could show you we're on a podcast you can see a photo of David DeVitt, of what David DeVitt ranch owner wore every day. I guess when you say he was going to work, he wore a snap rim fedora, a full three-piece suit with a tie with it, with a fancy stick pin on it, and Spats. You know, in the old 1920s of Alexi Spats, like her Culepoirau war and the Agatha Christie things.
Speaker 2:He didn't look like a cowboy. He was not a cowboy.
Speaker 1:He was a ranch manager. He operated it that way. Some of his hands probably dressed that way. But that's not in fact David David, except in the DeVitt family. Except for a Short period when they had to establish a stretch of headquarters for a homeless. They didn't live on the Mallet Ranch, they lived in. Fort Worth is where they lived. David DeVitt Lived it where he live. I had the most time he's managing that. He lived in Lava, in the top floor of the Hilton Hotel in a suite, is where he left during this time and he drove out to the ranch every day. C C Slaughter we mentioned him. He never lived on his ranch. C C Slaughter lived in Dallas. These were, listen, the best I can say. Well, they're absolutely landowners, but they were like at the same period. They're like Carnegie J P Morgan. They're Industrialists to some extent. It's just that their factory is the ranch. Is what they, what? It was? Good point. So it's not. Anyway, it's our romantic image, what's we know? We probably need to to take that out of our mind for sure.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, you know, well, you know. What do I know about ranching is it's what I grew up with and remember bonanza with the. You know boss, not boss. But boss.
Speaker 1:Heartride, you know, and little Joe and everybody wanted to be little Joe, right, nobody wanted to be Hawes.
Speaker 2:I like toss, speaking of which was was Haas from the Mallet Ranch.
Speaker 1:No, he did not. As far as I know, he didn't ever go to the mall.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:He lived in O'Donnell. You grew up in O'Donnell, which is not far from the Mises.
Speaker 2:So what so you? So how did you Get involved in this project? You need to talk, mention about all these grants in the ranching heritage center and give us a little background About what interested you in.
Speaker 1:Okay, what's up? This is different, I suppose, different than many people come to a Project, many historians come to a project in this and that I was approached by Travis Snyder at Texas Tech Press and Jim Brett Campbell, who is the Director of the National Ranching Heritage Center, and said that that, but they had heard, you know, they'd heard of me and I'd worked on ranching history before With up and and the co-editor of a ranching heritage center and a press, and because of that they said we want to have this, we have this book project in mind and we would like you to write on the mall at ranch. And so they recruited me. It's a, you know, it was a paid gig to do it, but that doesn't mean that I have any less interest. As I researched it and got into it, it became fascinating to me because I saw it as so representative of Texas ranches and how they evolved out of the romantic ranching period Into the 20th century and the mallets very representative of how that happened. And so it became and that's somewhat how I framed the book this way Well, we can get an idea, a snapshot, as good historians do, of how this evolution took place.
Speaker 1:Of course, the mallet ran cattle and David DeVitt was a Manager who managed cattle on his ranch. He had a unique idea for the most part that he ran a complete steer or Operation. He did not run a cow cap operation in this. He bought steers and stocked his range with just steers, as he's raising them Solely for the for the beef market. I mean, this is that's what he does. He's not. He was not interested in producing offspring From the cow cap and he increases her. He essentially bought cattle, raised cattle and sold the cattle and bought more cattle. He raised them is what he did. So it's essentially this and this is what in the early 20th century to some extent that's what cattle one way that cattle ranching had to evolve. It was solely for this meat operation and this was a good way and and David hit on it very well and became very profitable at it.
Speaker 1:The slowdown in the glut of the beef market after World War one and particularly into the 1920s, begin to, in the late 19th, beginning to devastate the mallet. He, david, ran them out. He ran the mallet very conservatively. He was a conservative businessman and how he ran the mallet now would point to you that he probably was not a conservative in his lifestyle, david. David could spend some money and his personal lifestyle, but he ran the mallet very certainly, but still the the, the glut and the fall and beef prices in the 20s hit them hard and the mallet ranch was close to being liquidated when David died and passed away in 1930s and it when it passed to his heirs, christine and Helen, and his wife Florence was still alive at that time and they struggled with the ranch and the. And he wasn't the only owner. He had a board of directors and people who own the ranch with him and they were ready to liquidate the ranch by the mid 1930s with the depression and then, like everything else in Texas, oil Saved it, as oil was discovered on the mallet.
Speaker 2:Well, let me go back to the. Let me go back to the depression here. Did what did the depression affect the ranch, or was it other issues?
Speaker 1:Well, it's other. You know, genius, like many things in agriculture in Texas at that time. You know, I like to always say, when you talk about the Great Depression, agricultural producers, farmers and ranchers and various other razors in Texas, when the depression came and everybody started screaming, oh there's a depression, there's a pressure. Well, the depression in agriculture started much earlier than the supposed 1929 crash. It started in Texas and by 1925 and so a lot of them would say welcome to our world. We've been doing this for a long time.
Speaker 2:So I mean I was post World War one.
Speaker 1:Yes, and it was the slowdown after that. So I guess you could say the depression caused that, but not in the traditional time period that we think of the depression. It had already started.
Speaker 2:What about the the dust ball and I know that that that Lubbock heights and and and South Plains are. It's like to say, well, we really weren't in the dust ball, but there's got to be a lot of wind and dust coming through.
Speaker 1:Well, the dust ball did affect the mallets revenues to some extent. Part of the mallet, like many of the other Ranches on the South Plains at that time, had gotten into this, breaking up and selling it for farm operations and selling for the land for farm operations, and the mallet had done that where they were. What they were doing was was leasing, raining a lot of Some of their land out to people to raise crops on as farmers and, of course, when the dust bow and that ecological disaster hit, that hits the revenues from the farmlands very, very hard and that just contributed to the demise of the range as it was.
Speaker 2:Well, let me go, let's let's go back to what you were talking about before I so rudely interrupted you, and that's oil. I mean, this is another issue or another topic that a lot of people don't associate with cattle ranching and, especially in West Texas, the oil industry, and the discovery and exploration of oil has really changed a lot of that industry and that business. So let's go down that road a little bit.
Speaker 1:Well, there was. You know, there's the old wet adage for those of us from West Texas and I was definitely. You talked to people on ranch land, sir that they say oh yeah, having oil discovered on my land has allowed me to continue ranching, because you can do other things and of course you think about big, large expanses of land in West Texas. There's gonna be oil underneath it, and that was the case with the mallet, as it was the start of a huge pool of oil that was discovered there at its height. The mallet, the first ranch on the first fresh ranch, the first oil well on the mallet ranch was was drilled in 1935. But they don't really discover a great amount of oil there till 1938 it's when it comes about.
Speaker 1:But by the mid 1960s the 60,000 acres of land on the mallet contained more than 1600 oil wells on it, holy smoke and it was one of the biggest producing pieces of land in the oil in the world and this is what made the David family very wealthy In this regard and it's most. In this wealth almost all comes. No oil was produced, what David David was still alive. It all comes afterwards. The big central part of the book is this fight over the oil lands and you know you could say that Christine DeVitt, in her stubbornness, held out and got the most profit from oil that the for the lands that she did. I don't know that that's the case. I think Christine was stubborn. Just because Christine was stubborn, she was just a stubborn woman On this and she was a very frugal woman despite her great wealth.
Speaker 1:Of course, the biggest story of the wealth of the of the David family and through the eyes of their foundations, is their philanthropy. She became Christine DeVitt and then her sister Helen. They came Probably the well stay off the biggest philanthropists in the South Plains, they. The amount of their fortune that they essentially gave away is unbelievable. Certainly they weren't starting from the highs of a man like Carnegie, but you know Carnegie kept a whole lot of his fortune Most I mean the David fortune today that was made. Every bit of it is in those foundations. They're giving that money away and and they're enriching things all over.
Speaker 1:You go to Lubbock today, for example, and you see one of their big prizes is the new Buddy Holly Center that's been built there. It's a fantastic performing arts place. The CH Foundation and the Helen Jones DeVitt Foundation they funded a big good portion, a good portion of the building of that and for their philanthropy they there's a new 1970 tornado Memorial. But mostly the Helen Jones DeVitt Foundation and the CH Foundation have given I forget the exact number but it's in the tens of a millions of dollars to educational initiatives. They fund scholarships, particularly the Texas tax. They gave a lot of money to Texas tax, the National Ranching Heritage Center, that's most. The biggest donor to that was the DeVitt family.
Speaker 2:So, scott, let's run him back up a little bit here. And you know, of course I know this, and many of our listeners do know this, but not everybody does. We get new listeners from time to time, so let's listeners Wow.
Speaker 2:We do and we and we and we love them. Thank you for listening. So, scott is actually ranching history is something that you're very familiar with and you were talking about Hank Smith earlier. So how did you get interested in doing ranching history and Hank Smith was your dissertation and you have a book on Hank Smith. So tell me how did you get interested in ranching history and a little bit about Hank Smith.
Speaker 1:Well, it's like a whole lot of things and when I've done office, paul Crossan's fault, I don't know if I can say I had.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think that. I don't think that's aimed with an interest in ranching history court group in West Texas. You have an interest in ranching history, don't you? But it was in a, actually in his seminar class. It is a Western US seminar class and I was taken with him and you have to write a you know research paper. And Dr Crossan called me into his office and he said I got a research project. You know, if you know Paul, you know exactly. I got a research project for you. I've been trying to get somebody to do something on Hank Smith for a long time. Oh, I don't know, that's the biggest. That'd be good one for you to do. You know, I'm somebody who you know, if you're, you know, if you're a mentor, if your instructor tells you to do something, you're going to follow orders, so whatever. So I did that for a paper. Well then I became very interested in Smith and and who was he?
Speaker 1:coming. Hank Smith was. I call it the book. It's called, you know, hank Smith. I call him a Western man. He also has some I mean a fantastic, interesting story.
Speaker 1:He was born in Bavaria, so he was, he was German, heinrich Schmidt. He was born as when he was just 16 years old, after the death of his father, he gets on a boat in Hamburg so and Goes to the, comes to the United States. He lands in New York, mates he's by himself, he's 16 years old Makes his way overland to Ohio where his sister had come to live, and he lives with his sister for just a year. I think there was some contentionists with his brother-in-law, so then he leaves his sister on. By this time he's reached the brop old age of 17. He goes to work as a deck hand on a ship in Lake Erie and the first time he goes out in Lake Erie the ship sinks and he almost drowns and he barely makes it to shore and I think he decides well, I don't want to do this. So, like a whole lot of people at that time, he began moving west. You know, it's the. You know, at this time it's in the 1850s. He makes his way out to Missouri, goes to work on the Mormon trail. He makes his way all the way out to California where he but he, you know, he breaks horses for a man in a ranch by Santa Barbara and then he starts making his way back. He goes to Arizona where he mines, he goes into New Mexico where he's also a minor.
Speaker 1:Then the Civil War breaks out. He fights on both sides of the Civil War and then finds himself in Texas where he gets a job, essentially as a hauler. He's a, you know, he's hauling a and wood, mostly the forts and but he's kind of some prosperity. He makes his way. He sets a business up in Albany Fort Griffin and the Albany South Bound and Jed at Fort Griffin when he loans a man money to this man. It was a near do well, rich guy, but he wanted rich as everybody thought to build a grand ranch out on the South Plains, the what was going to, you know, be eventually called the cross, be, as Hank Smith will name it, and not far from the present-day town across between and Smith loaned him money and was selling limber. Well, the guy goes broke and Smith's like number 25 in line of creditors waiting up to pick this guy's carcass of everything and all he can do is take Possession of the land that he has. So he doesn't ever set out to become a rancher, but he takes it over.
Speaker 1:He's the first person on the South Plains. He moves in to start the cross being just. I mean less than a year After, really after a round of McKinsey and the Calvary of thought battles of Yellow House Canyon against the Comanche, and he sets up the cross view operation. He finally dies in 1912 and he's he's a small operator. He's not anywhere near. His neighbors are the Matador, the Kentucky Land and cattle company, the, the, the two buckle ranch. That are huge operations. He's nowhere near the big opera. Smith never had more than 40,000 acres of that time, but he made his way and made a degree of wealth On this, and so my point being that he is, he's typical of someone in that time In West ring and trying to find.
Speaker 1:You know, it's all about opportunity, moving west of 40,000 acres is 38,000 acres more than I've ever had well, that is true, but and, and you know, 40, that would be 39,999 more than I've ever had problems well, you know, this is here.
Speaker 2:Here's the, the, the director, executive director of the East Texas Historical Association and who's a specialist in ranches of the southern plains on the other side of the state, isn't that?
Speaker 1:something. It just shows you that migration ever stops right. You know there's more cattle in East Texas now than there is in West Texas and has been that case for a long time. The actual the the biggest cattle raising area of Texas is in the East, not the West.
Speaker 2:Huh. Well, scott, let me we're. We're running short of time here and I think it's really interesting. I'm gonna. First of all, I want to say congratulations on the book. It's beautiful and We'll let everybody at Texas test John Brock and everybody know that we've done this podcast and to tune in so that we're pushing we're pushing their book in order the book.
Speaker 1:You can order the book through Texas Tech Press.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's a beautiful book, folks, it's. If you're, if you want to know something about Texas ranching history, get this book you. You won't regret it. Scott, we, we normally ask our, our victims, I mean our guests what do you know?
Speaker 1:so I don't know anything right?
Speaker 2:well, I know that, but you do know something about ranching history. So what do you know about the mallets that you would share with us?
Speaker 1:Interesting thing about the mallets that I wish. I love this story, this I like to end up found on this, because it just fascinated me that 1600 oil wells, hens of millions of dollars coming out on the ground and Pusting to vet running it. This is in the 1960s and she's a multi-millionaire. Her ranch foreman was begging her for years to put in a phone at the mallet ranch because he said, sometimes I need to touch it. Christine lived in Lava and Need to talk to you. I can't get a hold of you until you happen to come out here somewhere. And she wouldn't do it. She didn't want to put in a phone because it was too expensive and she don't spend that money. And all these people start using the phone. Well, he finally talked her into it. So she finally puts a phone in. And I found it.
Speaker 1:There was this thing that's set next to the phone, is just a pad, and if you're one of the hands and you came to use the phone, you had to put down how long you use the phone. So she knew. And then Christine would go through the bill at the end of every month and Tally up what if this hand use the phone for three minutes on this day and that cost 15 cents and she would tally it up and take that amount out of their check every month for what they use the. And I'm like going is this not picture her? Give you a great example who Christine the bill was, but just that story. So there you go. That's that. There's a tidbit, that that is a story. That's a great story, scott.
Speaker 2:So once again, this book, more than running cattle the mallet ranch of the South Plains by our very own M Scott. So's be beautiful book, not a lot of people. A great book. It just came out by Texas Tech University Press. I ordered it through Amazon. For some reason I wasn't on that. A free book by the authors list? That I'll have to check with, john. Well, you know, I'm not sure I was on that list either. You know, didn't get very many copies either.
Speaker 1:Thanks a lot and we're gonna be talking to some other people in the United States.
Speaker 2:Scott thanks a lot and we're going to be talking to some other authors in the next coming episodes, so stay tuned as we talk about Texas history with people who are writing about it. Scott, thank you again and thank everybody for listening.
Speaker 1:Bye, everybody Bye.