Wheeler

The LX Ranch was established in Potter County in 1877 by W. H. (Deacon) Bates and David T. Beals, two enterprising Bostonians who had already started a ranch in 1875 on the Arkansas River near Granada, Colorado. By the following year that range was crowded, compelling Bates and Beals to send an employee, John Ray, down to look over land along the breaks of the Canadian River in the Texas Panhandle. Subsequently Bates and Beals, in partnership with Henry J. Rosencrans and Erskine Clement (Beals's son-in-law), drove their first herd to the new headquarters on Ranch Creek, a tributary of the Canadian. This site, about a mile east of Pitcher Creek in Potter County, was the center of a vast spread of free grassland teeming with wildlife. While Bates returned to Colorado to move the remainder of their cattle and horses to the new range, Beals and Clements went to Dodge City to buy more longhorn cattle. Among the trail hands they hired was Charles A. Siringo, who worked off and on for the LX during the next several years.

Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.