Burnett Oil Co., Inc.6C Layout 1
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It would be impossible to tell the history Anne W. Marion, great-grand daughter of BURNETT of Burnett Oil Co., Inc., without recounting Samuel “Burk” Burnett, often called “Little its relationship to the Four Sixes Ranch Anne”, formed Burnett Oil Co., Inc. in 1980, OIL CO., INC. and Burnett Ranches, LLC. Together, these and became Chairman of the company. The businesses and the family that founded them properties of Windfohr Oil were a part of the form the basis of one of the most fascinating foundation of the new company. These oil HE OUR stories in Texas history. fields, in West Texas and Southeast New T F Burnett Oil Co., Inc., an experienced and Mexico, were originally assembled and drilled well-regarded operator in the Permian and by Robert F. Windfohr, a Burnett family SIXES RANCH other basins, is privately owned and operated member by marriage to Anne Marion’s mother, by Anne Burnett Windfohr Marion. Burnett Anne Valliant Burnett Tandy. Oil Co, Inc., operates producing properties However, the roots of the Burnett family BURNETT in Southeast New Mexico (Loco Hills region interests in oil and gas began with the assembly in Eddy County), West Texas (Sand Hills of the Burnett Ranches by Samuel “Burk” RANCHES, LLC region of Crane County), on the Triangle and Burnett. At age 10, in 1858, Burnett moved 6666 Headquarters Ranches, the Fort Worth with his family to Denton County, Texas when Basin, the Anadarko Basin of Oklahoma conditions forced his parents—Jeremiah and and the Texas Panhandle, the Appalachian Mary Turner Burnett—to leave Missouri. Basin in Southwest Pennsylvania and West Although an experienced farmer, Jeremiah Virginia, and has ongoing exploration efforts became involved in the cattle business, and PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF LARRY GALBIATI. in several other states. Burk learned about cattle from a young age. People grew up quickly in those days, so by age nineteen Burk had gone into business for himself. He started by rounding up wild longhorn cattle in South Texas and driving them north to sell. Then, in 1868, he purchased 100 head branded with “6666” from Frank Crowley of Denton. Title to the cattle included ownership of the brand, and Burnett realized the open-six design would be easy to fashion into irons, and the brand would be difficult to alter by cattle thieves. Thus was born an iconic brand that would come to represent much more than ownership of cattle. At age twenty, Burk married Ruth B. Loyd, daughter of Martin B. Loyd, founder of the First National Bank of Fort Worth. Five years later, Burk survived the panic of 1873 by holding through the winter more than 1,100 steers he had driven to market in Wichita, Kansas. The next year, with the panic over, he sold the cattle for a $10,000 profit, an amount equivalent to more than $200,000 in 2013. Following this experience, Burk became one of the first ranchers in Texas to buy steers and graze them for market. During the next winter, he bought 1,300 cattle in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and drove them north up the Chisholm Trail to the open range grazing lands near the Little Wichita River. He quickly came to TEXAS PETROLEUM - The Unconventional History 2 understand the importance of having control architectural firm Sanguiner and Staats of Fort over the lands on which cattle fed, and with Worth designed the eleven bedroom home, that in mind, Burk began buying property. built with stone quarried on the ranch, to serve He later built his first headquarters near what as ranch headquarters, to house the ranch ABOVE AND BELOW: PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF would become Wichita Falls. manager, and as a place for entertaining. WYMAN MEINZER PHOTOGRAPHY. A drought in the 1880s forced Burnett to The Four Sixes Supply House was built search for grass to sustain his cattle, and when he several years before the main house. Burk discovered that Kiowa and Comanche tribal lived in the back of the supply house until the lands north of the Red River had not suffered main house was completed. His office from drought, he negotiated the lease of Indian remained in the supply house. lands. He made a deal with legendary Comanche In 1921, oil was discovered on Burk’s land Chief Quanah Parker (1845-1911) for access to near Dixon Creek in Hutchinson County in 300,000 acres of grassland and, in the process, the Texas Panhandle. The Gulf No. 2 Burnett gained the friendship of the Comanche leader. served as the discovery well of the giant Burk ran 10,000 head of cattle on the land until Panhandle Oil Field. Drilling began in the end of the lease in the early 1900s. November 1920 and was completed in April As the nineteenth century drew to a close, 1921. The well was 3,052 feet deep, and 175 the end of the open range became apparent. barrels were produced in the first twenty-five The only protection the cowman had was to hours of pumping. It produced constantly for purchase private land on which to graze his cattle. What would eventually become Burnett Ranches, LLC, began around 1900 with the purchase of the 8 Ranch near Guthrie in King County and the Dixon Creek Ranch near Panhandle. The 8 Ranch became the nucleus of the present-day Four Sixes Ranch. These two ranches, along with later additions, totaled one-third of a million acres. Since 1900, Burk had maintained a home in Fort Worth, headquarters for his financial enterprises. He added to and developed his holdings, including building the Four Sixes Supply House, and a new headquarters in Guthrie. In 1917, Burk decided to build “the finest ranch house in West Texas” at Guthrie, at a cost of $100,000, an amount equal to more than $1.8 million in 2013. Prestigious SHARING THE HERITAGE 3 fifty years. This was the first oil well brought At the time of Burk’s death in 1922, in on the Texas Panhandle Field, relatively Thomas Loyd Burnett, born December 10, small compared to future wells, one of which 1871, was his only living child. Beginning as produced 10,000 barrels a day. Following this a ranch hand, Tom learned the cattle business discovery, hundreds of people flooded the in the 1880s and 1890s in Indian country town of Panhandle. Oil field workers, between the Wichita Mountains. After lawyers, firefighters, and lumbermen altered attending school in Fort Worth, St. Louis, and the city’s look in short order. As drilling the Virginia Military Institute, the sixteen year progressed in the 1920s, the West Panhandle old began moving cattle on the Burk Burnett Gas Field extended across most of Burnett’s Ranch. Each autumn, he worked as a wagon Dixon Creek Ranch in adjacent Carson hand in the Comanche-Kiowa Reservation. ABOVE AND BELOW: PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF WYMAN MEINZER PHOTOGRAPHY. County to the south. West Panhandle later He worked for five years as a line rider on coalesced into the mega-giant Hugoton- his father’s ranch, which spread over more Panhandle Gas Field, the largest natural gas than 50,000 acres on the Red River. As he field in North America. The town of Borger, approached twenty-one, Tom was named Texas, often considered a Phillips Petroleum wagon boss of the Nation (Indian Territory) company town, was also an outgrowth of Wagon. That same year, on October 8, 1891, Panhandle Field development. he married Olive “Ollie” Lake of Fort Worth, and the couple lived at the Burnett Ranch House while Tom ran the Indian Territory unit of the Four Sixes Ranch. They had one daughter, Anne Valliant, born in 1900. In 1910, Tom bought the 26,000 acre Triangle Ranch at Iowa Park. When Martin B. Loyd died in 1912, Tom inherited one-fourth of his grandfather’s Wichita County properties along with a large sum of money. Oil discoveries in the county added to his fortune. Tom continued to expand his Triangle holdings, purchasing five ranches in the next fifteen years, consolidating them into one vast range of more than 100,000 acres. Tom became a rodeo impresario, financing and promoting some of the biggest rodeos in the southeast, and developed a passion for good cow horses and later bred Palominos that he featured in fairs, parades, and rodeos. TEXAS PETROLEUM - The Unconventional History 4 George Humphreys, who began working on thirty-eight. Referred to as “Miss Anne,” she the Four Sixes Ranch in 1918 and retired fifty- was known for her knowledge of cattle, horses, two years later, served as the ranch’s third ranch and fine art. At the urging of her daughter, manager, as sheriff of King County from 1928 Anne Tandy started the Burnett Foundation in to 1948, and overseer to the ranch’s horse 1978. She appointed Anne W. Marion to be operation. He turned the Four Sixes horses into President of the Foundation and she remains the best in the country. Hollywood Gold, foaled President today. The Burnett Foundation was on the Burnett Ranch in Iowa Park in 1940, funded with about $28 million initially. These became Humphreys favorite stud horse. funds did not come from oil and gas revenue, Hollywood Gold’s offspring won cutting but from the Charles Tandy estate. Since the contests across the United States and brought inception, the Burnett Foundation has given top prices for breeding. Other than the away about $500 million, and today it is worth discovery of oil, the most important about $230 million. development on the Four Sixes Ranch was the Although schooled in the East and raised in a addition of an equine breeding program in the society atmosphere, Miss Anne valued her 1960s under Humphreys management.