Essays

Moseying: Living La Vida Llanero

Women Ranchers
March 21, 2004

When folks think of the ranching industry, they immediately think of cowboys – skinny, bowlegged, slow-talking, men of clear and steady gaze. They think of roundups, chuckwagons, cattledrives, branding, rodeos, livestock trucks barreling down the highway leaving a stink of manure behind, but they don’t think of women. They should, however, for west Texas ranch women are a treasure.

Eddie Mae Woodward, from Bakersfield, Texas was an avid amateur historian. She gave programs to garden clubs and civic groups in many towns of the region, as well as had articles published in historical association annuals. Active in the “Friends of Old Fort Stockton,” she was a supporter of the Annie Riggs Museum, also in Fort Stockton, and has served on the Pecos County Historical Commission. She was also on the Pecos County Appraisal Board. She and husband Louis, a second generation rancher, raised sheep, goats and cattle for over 50 years in Terrell, Crane, Pecos, and Culberson Counties until their deaths in 2005. Four sons and a grandson continue the family business.

Candi Cowden was born in Midland, but lived the first nine years of her life in Crane County as a rancher’s kid before moving back to Midland for public schooling. She graduated from the University of Texas, and then taught and coached for nine years at Consordia Lutheran University, the University of Arizona. and the College of William and Mary. “After my obligatory academic and practical career, I did the impractical, leaving the security of teaching in lush Virgina and headed west to begin the insecure life as a rancher in Crane, where my heart and soul resides.” She is the “wagon boss” of the Crane County ranch, and leased ranches in Ector, Andrews, and Sterling Counties. She raises and trains registered quarter horses and “rides herd over crossbred cows and Charolais bulls.” She has often taught area school children about life on a ranch.

Peggy Maddox has been involved in ranching since she married Joe Maddox 43 years ago. Joe’s family has ranched in Mitchell and Nolan Counties from the early 1900’s, and son Dalton still does. Peggy taught in Sweetwater, guiding the gifted and talented classes in middle school. Now Peggy and Joe manage the 11,000 acre Savory Institute’s demonstration and research ranch south of Ozona, Texas. Using Holistic Resource Management techniques developed by Alan Savory, and running sheep, cattle, and mules, the ranch’s goal is to improve grazing conditions through quick rotational grazing.

Maria Bentacour, the founder of San Antonio, who as the sole owner of a ranch in 1731, may have been the first rancher in Texas. 15% of the ranches in 1810 in Spanish Texas were owned by women. Women came to west Texas as soon as the men, although in the first few years they were outnumbered. Even during the free range days, as the cattle drifted ever onward, women kept house in wagons, cooked, and “cowboyed when needed,” herding, roping, taming horses, and doctoring sick cows. Historian Joyce Royce in “The Cowgirls” theorizes that the emancipation of American women may have begun in ranch country, and that it came from the necessity of “making do, doing whatever had to be done to keep the ranch going, which promoted considerable equality between women and men.”

I have found a reference to two sisters who were “the best ropers in Dawson County” in the 1890’s, and a note that said that a woman won a roping competition in Stanton in the same decade. Dora Roberts, of Howard County, ran her ranch by herself after both of her husbands died, including burning prickly pear and feeding it to starving cattle during the big drought of the 1890’s. Sally Skull was a horse trader that traveled in this area before 1900 – and by her name it can be inferred she was a shrewd trader. Molly Goodnight was instrumental in convincing Texas ranchers to switch from longhorn cattle and start raising purebred animals.

Digging around in the Haley Library’s files, I have found a number of memoirs written by women about life on ranches of the region during settlement times. Women’s contributions to the civilizing qualities of life are unquestionable – many churches and schools were begun by women. Dora Roberts is the quintessential example of this, for she helped fund many Methodist churches in the region, donated money to the McMurry and Texas Wesleyan Colleges, and her foundation continues such philanthropic work to this day.

In 1993 Elizabeth Maret published “Women of the Range,” a study of women’s roles in the Texas beef cattle industry. Nowadays women are sole owners of 25 percent of Texas ranches. 20% of the married ranch women make all the business decisions for the ranch. Over half of the married ranch women supervise the work, run heavy equipment, or do the marketing of the stock. In 1952, the Texas Cattlewomen’s Association was formed, and was the first in the agricultural industry to promote the products of their industry – 15 years before any other such group did so.

Like all businesses, the ranching industry has diversified. Women now can be found owning sale barns, cattle fitting services (customized grooming and training for the livestock show circuit), as large animal vets, run agricultural oriented advertising services, and design special computer programs for ranch operations or breeding statistics. Texas women also run artificial insemination (AI) services. Top bulls are worth a million dollars, because one bull can now inseminate 40,000 cows with AI, while doing it the natural way a bull tires out after a couple dozen “breeding episodes” a year. Women are found teaching ag in schools, managing satellite sales, embryo transfer operations, and often run breed associations that maintain breeding records.

Ranch women are special. Many that I have met are steady and strong, and have a self-confidence that exudes confidence and optimism. Dorothy Scharborough’s “The Wind” may have told the story of a woman driven insane by the wind and loneliness of frontier west Texas, but Georgellen Burnett’s “We just toughed it out; women on the Llano Estacado” shows that most women handled the hard times and extreme weather “jes’ fine.” Our region is “tough country,” but it has created some of the finest women (and men) ever to have lived!