Essays

Moseying: Locations of Interest

Xbar Ranch at Eldorado and nature tourism
January 21, 2004

Imagine spending the night where you can not see the light of a house in any direction! Yes, you can do that camping, elsewhere, but you would not be sleeping in a luxurious king sized bed looking out a two-story plate glass window. You would also be in one of the most unique houses of west Texas -- a circular building made of native stone. The décor is pure Texana; for example, in the china cabinet is a collection of turquoise plates with a roadrunner motif. Outside the door awaits trails of lengths varying from a mile and a half to twelve miles. Mountain bikes are welcome, and the trails lead up and down hills covered with live oaks, and junipers.

The Xbar Ranch, fifteen miles south of Eldorado, Texas, is a working ranch, owned by the Meador family for over a hundred years. It has both cattle and sheep, including a small herd of longhorn cattle that are polite and well mannered -- in fact, your guide, Stan Meador, (a fifth generation member of the family) might even let you hand feed them! Stan Meador is a leader of the eco-tourism movement, and speaks to interested groups all across Texas. Landowners are realizing that many city-dwelling folks rarely get a chance to experience that which Texas is most famous -- ranch life. To visit, call 888-853-2688, and check out the website at www.xbarranch.com.

I am impressed with the place. I like exploring the ranch situated on the very western edge of the Hill Country of Texas. For an amateur naturalist, ecotones (where two ecoregions meet) often have a surprising array of flora and fauna. In the wetter years, the spring brings carpets of bluebonnets.

On a recent working visit I spent 15 minutes sitting next to a small stock pond. A dozen bright blue scrub jays swooped in, snooped around, and then came to the water to drink, whooping and hollering. Their boldness inspired a stunning male cardinal to join in. The chaotic and noisy activity gave courage to every other bird within hearing, and along came a wintering flock of robins, a small coterie of titmice, and a dozen shy sparrows. Near the waterhole is a blind, but I had not utilized it. I merely had sat down on a rock under a live oak not more than 10 feet from the water.

Stan and his father, Lynn, took me walking down in the watercourse of Granger Draw. We strolled along under huge old live oaks and beside rock ledges that had fossils by the hundreds -- oyster, clam, snail, and cephalopods mostly. In one oak grove, the ground was littered with turkey droppings. "This is the major roost on the property. Yesterday I saw three flocks of twenty when I drove across the ranch," Stan told me. We later saw a half-dozen lurking half-hidden behind a thick patch of junipers, warily eyeballing our perambulations. I told him about a "turkey drive" in settlement times, a little further east at Menard. Many settlers brought turkeys along with chickens and pigs. The wild tom turkeys charmed the domestic hens into the boonies, so turkey "ranching" did not become an important industry. Turkey hunting, however, is growing in popularity, according to Stan.

Near the Roundhouse is a huge burnt rock midden (a partially subterranean roasting oven.) Jumano and Lipan Apache once lived in the region. Lynn Meador is "more than happy" to fill you in on midden lore. "It puzzles me how the Indians could have stayed around long -- there was no permanent water -- no creeks or seeps. Some of the bedrock bottoms of the draw can hold water awhile, though, so I suppose in rainy times a band of fifty Indians could have stuck around and hunted deer, or harvested acorns." Thirty miles down Granger Draw, where it becomes the Devil's River (after joining a dozen other draws), is the site of Beaver Lake, an important watering hole on the old Chihuahua and El Paso Trail. Beaver Lake was the scene of a number of "armed conflicts" where the Lipan Apache defended their hunting grounds. Downstream from there was the home of the "wolf-girl of the Devil's River." According to the legend, a girl raised by wolves roamed the canyons for over a decade.

Various members of the Hole in the Wall gang and Black Jack Ketchum's band of outlaws also spent time in the rough country of the region. When a person reads the local literature, it seems that almost every ranch in the headwaters of the Concho and Devil's Rivers has a story of a time that Black Jack appropriated a horse, a slicker, or a meal from a cowboy. From what I can figure out, it seems that the several families of ex-Confederate soldiers were raised with a resentment of the black buffalo soldiers at Forts Concho and McKavett, and then saw rich outsiders claim big stretches of the countryside. Without much hope of a future beyond being a 30 dollars a month cowboy, the young men of the families turned to outlawry. With the presence of the law mostly confined to the towns, the outlaws were able to continue their depredations for almost a decade. Train-robbing became their personal artform. The excesses of wealthy Englishmen, who played a major role in the development of the local sheep industry, gave them the illusion of loose money available for the taking. Watching the Meador longhorns and blackface sheep graze as similar stock did then, it was easy to slip into a daydream about living in those times, and made me wonder if some of their loot was not still buried in the hills.

At the nearby town of Eldorado a number of interesting festivals take place. Check with the Chamber of Commerce for this year's dates and plan to stay at the Roundhouse or the cabins or campsites that are also available at the Xbar ranch, and visit the "going-ons." Eldorado is home to the El Goatarod (not the Iditarod!), the Armchair Decathlon, and the Running of the Bull (a liar's convention.) All were sparked in the fertile mind of Jim Runge, who also has put up "Hysterical Markers" (spoofs of historical markers) in town. The community pitches in with glorious glee. West Texas "country humor" is a unique style that relies on wordplay, exaggeration, self-effacement, and a sense of the absurd. It is high-time you take a few days off and kick back, wouldn't you say? Enjoy yourself!