Of course it was easier to gather cattle on the flats than it was in high country, but still the difference seemed enormous. The government created a false economy. ROCKHOUNDING THE KOKERNOT o6 RANCH Lapidary Guillermo 13 subscribers 483 views 1 year ago First day we headed to agate hill Second day table 9 and table 10 For rough material and slabs Show more. Kokernot 06 Ranch 2015 Cutting results: Open Class: 1st: Byron Pope, riding Yankees San Badger, Owned by David Henry, score: 75 2nd: Laramie Stewart, riding Haidas Screamin Cat, Owned by Mike. In 2020, he began working with James Winn VI, one of the owners of the Kokernot 06 Ranch, to help him evaluate his ranch for collectible agates. General MacArthurs a bull, he told me. A giant antelope buck (imported apparently from the 06) galloped parallel to the Bronco for a few hundred yards, then shifted gears and raced across our path and out of sight. Ive been on a lot of field trips (over 1000 when I quit the morning you dont know what youll find later, and when youre This particular camp, called Number Nine, was the cowboys favorite. Diane Lacy and their two children rode with Chris. It grows logarithmically. the Stillwell agate. Sitting alone up there, I got a sense of why they loved it so desperately and had an insight into the meaning of a quote Id underlined in one of Barneys newspaper articles: I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. the left side of the street, across from the Sonic Drive-In. Lopeno, W of US 83, area surfaces, hills, etc. The other hillside had some blue botryoidal pieces with crystals, a So this was the enemy. Im a cattle entrepreneur, he said. He mentioned the Kokernots more than once to me; he was always interested in the big ranching families. Solid and colorful pieces. Before the arrival of Clayton Williams on the scene, the roundup had been by far the biggest event in the area. It was six or seven miles back to camp, so we stopped at a tank to water the horses. The 06 was one of the few ranches that still used a chuck wagon for spring branding and fall roundup, though in a rare concession to the twentieth century the wagon was now pulled by a pickup instead of a mule team. There were outcroppings of basalt here and there. To determine what type of public land a particular location is on, I would recommend starting with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Hunting Maps. You Can Still Buy Agate by the Bucketfull, http://terismithrockhunts.com/rocks-for-sale/. Is that a question? Its not possible anymore, Barney said. I actually wrote an entire article about how and where to find it, which Id suggest you check out: In Texas, blue topaz is only found in centrally located Mason County, particularly the towns of Mason and Grit. Many of the locations listed in the tables above and shown on the included map include agate as one of the potential discoverable minerals. Breakfast was pancakes, bacon, eggs, and chili colorado, left over from last nights supper. A ranch cook sawed off a chain on one of Williams gates, coiled the chain neatly on the ground, and decorated his display with a bowel movement. The hunt at the 06 was amazing. Along Teri, Note: The rockhunts on the 06 Ranch are being led by Aaron Thomas and Grande, from Southern Colorado through New Mexico and the Big Bend of Or, you can come out material from two Singleton buckets and putting them into one bucket, for But my grandfather says keep it one hundred per cent the same breed and you know what breed he means. Chris found a shallow place to cross Limpia Creek, hubcap-deep now and as clear and clean as its name suggested. Given the enormous size of the state, Texas is surprisingly lacking in its variety of minerals. You can He overgrazes, and he root-plows the native grasses and replants with hybrids from Texas A&M. The 06 paid what were standard cowboy wages: $50 a day plus tobacco and chuck. The Kokernot 06 Ranch. Barney Nelson had told me that she and Joel celebrated Thanksgiving every year by taking their provisions by pack horse and riding as far as we can, to a pasture theyd never seen before. Please make A wet, dark chill settled over the top country several hours before daylight, and a full moon flooded the sky with an eerie radiance. . There he met Diane, who had grown up in San Antonio. I recommend them highly. Heres what Im featuring: Walker Ranch But Williams was a trendsetter in the newer technique of embryo transfer. ranch Aaron Thomas is beginning to lead fieldtrips on. the Big Bend can open back up at 25% of their capacity, and restaurants can, as The other hillside had some blue botryoidal pieces with crystals, a They should have listened to nature. . Even if youre looking in the right areas it can be extremely difficult to find. This will give yall three days in a row for rockhunting on your trip out When the squall had passed, the cowboys examined the tepees, which were their individual shelters. Rivaled only by West Texas, South Texas is perhaps the best part of the state for rockhounding. Their neighbor on the next ranch over was one of the newcomers. Aaron explained a bit of the lower part of the nodule, which was solid, there were filaments of I take checks, PayPal, From Number Nine they moved to headquarters, to Number Five, to Cienega, back to headquarters, to Willow Springs, to Berrendo Flat, and finally back to headquarters again. chalcedony. through Thanksgiving, or perhaps all the way til the middle of December. Everyone had prayed for rain, but this was ridiculous. In my last email, I detailed the reason that I dropped the price on the What it amounts to, one of them said, is that hes subsidizing beef with oil., On the other hand, Clayton Williams, unlike many of the other newcomers, was no dilettante. Most land then was open range, but Herbert gradually acquired title to what became the 06. Willow Springs was one of the oldest camps on the 06, a throwback to the days when cowboys lived year-round in line camps on remote sections of the ranch. All of the Walker Ranch cutting agate buckets have been sold, as well as the buckets of agate nodules. Some of the improved pastures were failures, in the sense that they hadnt paid for themselves, and some had been plowed and replanted more than once. The idea of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a bull seemed as absurd as having bulls wear real pearl necklaces, which Clayton had done at an auction held in the lobby of his ClayDesta National Bank in Midland. In Joel had planned to ride up to the top country the next morning and check on some young horses, but it was too muddy. It's located near Kingsville, a town named after the ranch's founder, in between Corpus Christi and Brownsville. Kokernot 06 Ranch || Alpine & Fort Davis, Texas || Hereford Cattle You can look for a schedule from Aaron and me Cost is $10 single and $16 for a We dropped off into a canyon and topped out through a pass, then down another smaller canyon and up a hill. If some rich oilman was willing to pay $200 an acre, a rancher had to be crazy to raise cattle on it. He ran a cow-calf operation, though it was only a small part of the business. hot weather. Kokernot, an 06 Ranch owner, also built the Kokernot Field on E. Hendryx Dr and Fighting Buck . Kokernot is at one extreme of the beef production business, and Im crowding the other extreme. Far from being subsidized by oil, for the last five years Williams cattle business had been putting money into his oil business. Ive also They currently happen only on Sundays, and are limited to 10 rockhounds It doesnt take that long to use it up.. When I die, he said, the catclaw of the world will hold the damnedest celebration you ever saw., To put it bluntly, Clayton Williams did not believe in bending to nature. And the good stuff was indeed But whats best for cows is not necessarily best for grass in the balance of management. I took two customers out there and had a fantastic time even though I wasn't on the list to shoot an animal. Claiming 800,000 acres, King Ranch is the largest cowboy ranch in the United States for over 160 years. He has almost 30 years of experience as a guide and has been doing this since he was fifteen years old, starting with guiding duck and goose hunters. during the COVID pandemic. That way you can have a longer set of hunts and not have to choose between two ranches on any given day. reduced the price on the Ritchie Ranch buckets to $100 each, through the end of It is not a common thing on the ranches of the West for a city kid to become a bona-fide cowman, but when the gods, and the clouds, align great things can happen. His effort failed, but his brazen attempt to impose his will on the local folks stuck in the craws of ranchers like Chris Lacy and his grandfather. Fort Davis, Texas "The o6 ranch was an incredible place for this year's Ride! changes in how things are done, we are fortunate to still have three great The other end of the nodule was Some were recipients due to calve in a few months (they sold for an average of $39,000), others were pairs of bred cows with heifer calves (they sold for an average of $71,000), and still others were unbred cows (average price $30,000). We drove north of Alpine on 118 for a ways, out onto the flat valley. Right now, with COVID and the resulting Chris Lacy believed, for instance, that the drought dictated a severe cutback in 1984. I dont need him right now, and hell eat better at your place anyway., After Joel had delivered the bull to his pasture on the mountainside above Fort Davis, he drove into town, looking for Chris Lacys pickup. He settled his family near Columbus, Texas. Hotels and motels in His competitive business instincts pushed him to make his ranch operation profitable and it was. dropped the price on some other categories of rocks. David's two sons, Lee and John, followed him into ranching. you can reach Aaron Thomas at noraathomas@msn.com or The dominant agate was again to start considering what to give your favorite rockhounds for the He believed with every bone in his Aggie body that with the proper application of modern ranching techniques, you could make nature do the bending. I wondered how he could round up 1800 cattle in four days when it took the 06 four weeks to gather about half that. The best rockhounding locations in Texas are the gravel beds of the Rio Grande, the area around Big Bend, Mason County in central Texas, and a wide stretch of land stretching from south Texas to the Louisiana border. If it werent for the help of Aaron and James in carrying my rocks back Some of the agate and jasper there looked Native shrubs and grasses grew here for a reason. The house was supplied by the 06, as were utilities, long distance phone service, and all the beef they wanted. I may receive a commission for purchases made through these links at no additional cost to you. Kokernot Ranch is covered by the Whirlwind Spring, TX US Topo Map quadrant That means youre apt to get specimen Nature understood conservation far better than man did, and it was the wise rancher who understood nature and bent to her will. Kokernot 06 Ranch. He was making considerably more than that now, but the dream had mostly vanished because of the influx of newcomers and the corresponding rise in land prices. When they finally started to move, it was in our direction. Still, it was sad. Natural disasters were part of this countrys fatal charm part of a compromise and contract made more than a hundred years ago when men like Herbert Kokernot, Sr., began amassing the land to create their great West Texas ranches. Kokernot 06 Ranch || Alpine & Fort Davis, Texas || Hereford Cattle A company I worked for used to lease the Kokernot 06 Ranch in Alpine. Cowboys worked hard because they believed in the redemption of hard work. Williams had asked for and received permission from Kokernot to erect a huge American flag on Polks Peak for his annual August party. There was, of course, much to be pessimistic about in this fragile and volatile country. I had 153 lbs., which included a very large They didnt actually buy (or even get possession of) the bull. David was educated at Southwestern University in Georgetown and later at University of Texas in Austin. A piercing blue sky illuminated the mountains, and the great highland pastures swept off in all directions, clean, bright, and suddenly, magically, emerald-green, as though the storm had transformed the world from black and white to Technicolor. The first and last rule was, and still is, Let nature have her way. It was there that I came across the only annoyance of the day, in the The agates of West Texas and South Texas are notable for their pompom and bouquet varieties. Chris said he didnt think so. When the auction ended, Clayton announced that the sales had totaled $2.73 million, then led the crowd in the singing of God Bless America.. and really big compared to the ones I found at the Ritchie and the agate ($200 per bucket). quantities of great rocks. stick on. Ramon woke his assistant, a Mexican boy who spoke no English, and as the boy began preparing pancake batter and frying bacon, Ramon raked a piece of firewood across the corrugated tin sides of the shed and hollered, Chuck! Tent flaps opened, and the cowboys began crawling out, boots first. The Agates under $40 See more Featured Galleries South Dakota Rockhound Joe's Rock Farm Deer Texas Fort Davis, TX 79734, USA. In 1832, he sailed for Texas with a load of dry goods. On Before the fieldtrips start, there are a couple of things Id like to tell yall about.First, Ive added a new hunt on Sunday, 11/15 to East Needle Peak. with the gold moss on that hillside there was red moss, black plume in cab. More armed men were mounted on horses, and several helicopters patrolled overhead. More serious was the quarrel over water. She examined it tentatively. hills on that ranch. Aaron and Katrina have also opened up a rock shop in Alpine, the website www.takeahiketexas.com. It was exhilarating, hunting on ground that had Claytie led Desta and other members of his family to the stage, said a prayer, did another chorus of God Bless America, and announced that there would be fireworks as soon as it was dark, followed by dancing and singing until daybreak, at which time breakfast would be served. formed the agate was dissolved in ground water flowing horizontally. truck run by Aaron and his wife Katrina. I can move with the market, with the grass. He went on: A lot of ranchers like Kokernot are keeping their lights [steers under 350 pounds] to fatten them and wait for the market to jump. Television crews, moviemakers, wildlife artists, writers it chapped his Aggie ass to see them fawning over the 06. some really neat stuff that they call crayola. Many had surface pits that were in a regular pattern, as if bits in a chalcedony background, often in a regular pattern. take scenic trips around the United States, however, before getting to their Ive included all the hunts I know about in the Big Bend, including those led by Aaron Thomas and Jean Larremore, through April 30. Rocks, Cut Ends, agate sorted by color, agate nodules, circumstances (such as your bringing your pet aardvark along, bringing a bulldozer, It looks like the Improvements. Because of the extensive cross-fencing, he had pens and corrals scattered all over the ranch. It didnt take a psychiatrist to see that something didnt square here; any old-time rancher would have been willing to point it out. so the material looks great if you cut diagonally across the bands for your Nice polished Fire Agate from Mexico. COVID is still with us, and its still killing people. any color from white through the buff, pink, and red colors into brown, and the He had spent every summer and most vacations at the 06 he and his third cousin, Tom Beard, who now ran the Leoncita, learned to be real cowboys when other boys their age were still playing with stick horses. Most of them were younger than Obra, and some had college educations, but they were cut from the same cloth; they were all willing to sacrifice anything for this archaic, ritualistic way of life. Farmers went broke anyway, because it was not economically feasible to farm cotton out there. By the time Lacy and a visitor left the Sutler, it was mid-morning and the rain had stopped. going to California at the end of June. I enjoy collecting and tumbling rocks with my daughter and traveling the world with my wife seeing geologic wonders. I thought that was about the best life there was, Obra said. Ty Holland, one of the full-time 06 cowboys, put on a yellow slicker and ran toward the corrals, where a night horse, frightened and near panic, was tied beside a metal fence. I remembered the family name from being on the Baylor campus in Waco. The Kokernot household's 06 Ranch registered within the state since 1837. He served on the board of trustees for both Baylor University and Texas A&M University and as President of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Many movies and commercials have been filmed there. What if in the long run his hybrid grasses didnt thrive? Levi had been born in 1836 in Louisiana and lived most of his adult life in Gonzales County where he was a cattle rancher. Most expensive of all were the flushes (eggs) of supercows, whose average price was $137,000. to the vehicle, I wouldnt have gotten a third as much. quartz crystal covered tubes. Herbert Lee Kokernot, Sr. was born in 1867 to Levi Moses and Sarah Littlefield Kokernot. 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