Ranch Report: Parties west of the Pecos

No one minds the drive, because we all like a good party!

Jan 05, 2024

It’s not a big deal to drive 60 or 100 miles to attend a party out here. As my dad used to say “West Texas is the kind of place where you don’t mind driving 100 miles for a date.”

Sometimes when we get visitors from the east and ask if they want to run down to the Gage Hotel for dinner (57 miles), they’ll reply, “Oh, no. We’ve driven enough to get out here. Let’s just stay at the ranch.”

What they don’t understand is that it’s not a strain to drive out here. There is nothing between us and Marathon, Alpine, or Marfa, and the roads are wide open with speed limits at 75-80 mph. Plus the scenery on the trip is gorgeous. It’s like looking at a painting.

We’ve been driving 60-100 miles to parties and gatherings out here all of my life. First one I can remember is our parents loading us into the car to drive from Fort Stockton down to a barbecue near Fort Davis (85 miles away) when I was about five.

And of course there is that famous barbecue scene in GIANT. All of those fellow ranchers didn’t live “next door” to Bick and Leslie Benedict. They lived miles and miles away!

So it was when we got an invitation to attend a Christmas party at the old Girvin one-room school house in tiny (and now abandoned) Girvin, TX.

Girvin was once a bustling community because it had a shipping pen that loaded all of the livestock onto trains bound for Fort Worth, TX. Every rancher from miles around drove their herds to Girvin. At one time, the trap, or pen, that held all of the livestock covered four sections (that’s four square miles) and according to the railroad logs, more livestock was shipped from Girvin than any other point in the southern U.S. Most of the stock was sheep, not cattle, because from the early 1900s until about 1998, all of the ranchers out here raised sheep. (For more on that go here.)

It’s move those lambs and ewes, not “git along little dogie.”

Despite western movies and folklore portraying the cowboy as the hero of the west, Pecos County was at one time the largest sheep raising area in Texas. Why? Two reasons: First, you can make money off of sheep twice-when you shear them for their wool and when you sell them. Second, the U.S. government had a wool subsidy that guaranteed a price for wool. It started during World War II when all of the soldiers uniforms were made of wool, and it didn’t end until 1993. This meant that no matter what the market for wool was, as a sheep rancher you were guaranteed a price. But when it ended in 1993, almost all of the sheep ranchers out here got out of the wool business.

However, those ranches, and the ranch families who lived on them, are still around. And that’s the bulk of who showed up at the Girvin schoolhouse for the Christmas party on December 17.

It was only a 40-mile drive for Diann and I, through empty country, until we arrived at the little one-room, brick schoolhouse. It is the only one-room schoolhouse I am aware of made of brick. All others are wood, or log cabin style. The reason it was built of brick is because it’s located right by the railroad tracks, so a train brought in the bricks from San Antonio, dropped them off and they built the schoolhouse. (The little brick house to the left of it was the coal house, that held coal for the stove for heat.)

The gathering as spearheaded by Ernest, Snap and Skip Woodward, brothers who live on a large ranch (around 50,000 acres) that once raised sheep, but now is home to more than 244 wind turbines and some cattle.

Here is Ernest greeting “Babs” Kneipper.

Snap and Skip had their chuckwagon set up outside, so many of us gathered around it to have a cup of cowboy coffee and visit.

Meanwhile several of the ladies had decorated the old schoolhouse for Christmas, and for the dinner. Here’s Diann having a seat at one of the tables to give her injured knee a rest.

While I stayed outside to visit with old friend Pat Pearce (brother of Pam Pearce!) who had driven nearly 149 miles to be here.

It was all good to see so many old friends, mainly the next generation of friends of my parents and grandparents. Then Snap Woodward called us into the schoolhouse for the blessing and the meal.

And what a meal it was! People out here can cook, and they are used to cooking for large gatherings.

Snap had arranged for small gifts for everyone (I got a Texas-shaped trivet) then we all had dessert and did some more visiting. Diann enjoyed speaking with our “neighbor” Neal Woodward. (He lives about 20 miles from us.)

When it was all over, everyone piled into their pickup trucks and headed home, all going in different directions. On the drive back along Hwy 67, I stopped to get this photo of an old trap (pen) and a worn-out windmill, once part of a ranching operation.