Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collect
The early 20th century rhymist Berta Hart Nance, a product of a frontier family in Texas, dedicated some of her vast repository of words to the ranchman and his impact.
Other states were carved or born,
Texas grew from hide and horn.
Those lines could just as easily be used to describe the ascent of Burk Burnett, whose storied oil and cattle empire began with a seminal event in the northern parts of what was then known as Indian Territory. Burnett’s father had put him in charge of driving 1,700 head of longhorn cattle to Abilene for sale at market. Under him were 10 other men.
At 18, he was said to be the youngest man on the Chisholm Trail in charge of a herd at the time.
It didn’t take long for Burnett to be fully immersed in the baptismal waters of the hardship and trials of the frontier. In the early morning hours, determined warriors of the Osage raided Burnett’s camp with a ferocity known all too well to the travelers of the pioneer West and Midwest.
The target was horseflesh. In all, 20 horses were said to be stolen, the perpetrators absconded as quickly as they had descended. Lost were needed steeds, a shortage now that compromised the mission to Kansas.
According to his obituary, the year 1922, Burnett “never dreamed of turning back.”
“We’ll move on,” said Burnett, the trail boss, according to Cattle Kings of Texas, by C.L. Douglas, first published in 1939. “This herd is going through.”
During the remainder of the drive, the men walked during the day so that the horses — now 10 in all, one for each man — could be saved for another emergency at night.
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The cattle indeed made it to market, and Burnett returned with a nice profit.
Douglas called the trip Burnett’s coming of age and the beginning of a new cow kingdom in North Texas, its base of operations eventually the Four Sixes Ranch, headquartered in Guthrie, just under a two-hour drive to the south and west from Wichita Falls.
The Four Sixes name matched the brand and family coat-of-arms — 6666. A story emerged, as they often do, that Burnett adopted the brand after winning a big stake with four sixes in a poker game.
It is likely merely an urban — or perhaps rural — legend.
However, when he drove 1,100 steers to Wichita, Kansas, in 1873, they all wore what had become a permanent brand, “6666.”
In the past year, the ranch has made news through its transferal of ownership to a group led by actor and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan. For the first time since the mid-1870s, the Four Sixes and its predecessor Burk Station is not in the hands of Burnett descendants.
The estate of Anne Marion, Burnett’s great-granddaughter, sold the property for a reported $192 million.
Burnett began assembling the ranch property as he drove cattle purchased on the Pecos and Rio Grande to a point 15 miles from Wichita Falls, establishing what was later called Burk Station on the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad on a grand cow pasture.
He built the first frame house in Wichita County, hauling the lumber from Fort Worth by ox team. The Burnett ranch, consisting of about 30,000 acres, surrounding Burk Station, later became the smallest of the Burnett Ranches.
At that time, the Wichita country was all open. Burnett had what were called line riders, a ranch employee who patrolled boundaries, checked conditions (like water), and retrieved straying cattle. Wire fences were then unknown.
In the years that followed, Burnett was said to have done as much as anyone to make the cattle business a science. According to his obituary in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, he was a pioneer in the work of grading up the native Texas longhorn steer and by constant elimination of inferior stock and purchase of thoroughbred bulls, Burnett brought his herds to the top of the market.
Burnett was also perhaps the first to adopt the plan of buying in steers and holding them for the market, a plan “so patently good that the other big ranchmen of the section followed suit almost immediately.”
Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collect
It was the drought of 1881 that forced Burnett and other cattlemen up north of the Red River to the rich, fertile lands of the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache tribes. Working with Comanche Chief Quanah Parker, son of Cynthia Ann Parker and Chief Pete Nocona, Burnett secured the lease rights to about 300,000 acres. Within a very short time, 30,000 head of cattle were fattening on the property, bringing those tribes nearly $20,000 a year, according to reports at the time.
The cattlemen, including the Waggoners and Suggs, among others, would meet often to discuss leasing problems. Burnett, more often than not, would meet the Comanche chief and close the deals. Working as this liaison gained Burnett a Comanche name, Mas.
Being a friend of the hereditary chief, Quanah Parker, he acted as a sort of liaison agent between the cattlemen and the Indians, who gave him the Comanche name of Mas-sa-suta Burnett, meaning “Big Boss,” or “He says so,” according to Cattle Kings of Texas.
Tom Slack, who worked for Burnett’s partner and father-in-law, Martin B. Loyd of the First National Bank of Fort Worth, once made a trip with Burnett to make the annual payments to the tribes. Said Slack, according to Cattle Kings of Texas: “I was working for Mr. Loyd in the California and Texas Bank at Fort Worth in the late ’80s, and I recall that when Burnett and I left Fort Worth, we carried two satchels filled with currency … his share of the lease money.
“We traveled to Wichita Falls on the Fort Worth and Denver and met other cattlemen at Four Sixes headquarters near the present town of Burkburnett. Next morning all the cattlemen belted on their six-shooters, took up their Winchesters and satchels of currency, boarded hacks and crossed the Red River to be met on the Territory bank by an escort of cavalry from Fort Sill. Then we were escorted to the Indian agency at Anadarko.
“The Comanches and Kiowas were waiting, and for three days we passed $10 bills through the windows at the agency — $10 a head on presentation of the ration tickets the government issued to Indians in those days. Some of the Comanches opposed the leasing and were too proud to take the money, and we came to the end of the payment with a good surplus on hand. The cattlemen turned this money over to the government to be credited to the tribes.”
The business with the leases earned Burnett another close friendship.
The federal government sent orders for the cattlemen to vacate their leases in order to institute the government’s plan to open the Territory to homesteaders. Texas Sen. Joe Bailey organized a meeting between President Theodore Roosevelt and Burnett.
Bailey: “Mr. President, I want you to meet a cattleman from Texas, Mr. Burk Burnett.”
TR, extending his hand: “Glad to know you, Mr. Burnett. I’m a kind of cattleman myself.”
Burnett: “I’m glad to hear that, Mr. President. It’s a cattleman I’m huntin.’”
After explaining the pitfalls of a hurried exodus and the risk to cows and calves, and, ultimately, financial calamity, Roosevelt granted Burnett, the Waggoners, and others, a two-year stay.
Roosevelt was a frequent guest of the Four Sixes over the years that ensued.
In 1904, Burnett bought what was known as the “S” Ranch in King County from Louisville Land and Cattle Company, comprising at that time 141,000 acres and 15,000 head of stock. This was destined to be “the great ranch about which he had dreamed and planned for many years,” with Guthrie as its base. He also began buying up adjoining lands in King County, accounting in total more than 200,000 acres under fence.
The name was later changed to the Four Sixes Ranch.
The same year, Burnett bought the Dixon Creek Ranch in Carson County, containing at that time 107,500 acres.
All the property was needed because Burnett soon found his cattle competing for space with oil derricks, which precipitated the move out further west. The town that took his name, and Roosevelt lobbied for, Burkburnett developed into an oil boom town.
Burnett left the bulk of his estate to his granddaughter, Anne Burnett Tandy. In 1980, the Four Sixes was passed down to Tandy’s daughter, Anne Marion.
However, after more than 140 years, the acclaimed Four Sixes is no longer in Burnett hands but remains a working ranch, as well as a site to stage Hollywood-style productions.
Burnett’s story would be one worth telling.
