Outdoor Adventures 
Briscoe’s Bounty
Twenty-five years after he took office as governor, Dolph Briscoe still leads Texas in another way: as its largest individual landowner.
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Dolph Junior also loved ranching and planned to become a rancher in Mexico, but his father sent him to the University of Texas at Austin, where he majored in business administration (he sports the “UT” brand on his chest, seared into his flesh by fellow student and King Ranch heir Dick Kleberg with a branding iron when he was initiated into the Texas Cowboys service organization in 1941). When his father died in 1954, Dolph Junior inherited the Catarina—by then 100,000 acres—and 90,000 acres of other ranchland that his father had accumulated. “I was the fortunate recipient of what my father built,” he says. “That’s what got me off to such a fine start in the cattle business.” But good luck only goes so far. Briscoe has grown his family’s land holdings by continually reinvesting profits from his ranching, banking, and mineral interests in more and more land. “He’s a good businessman,” says Lawrence Clayton, the dean of the College of Arts at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene and the author of Historic Ranches of Texas (University of Texas Press). Clayton notes that because the return on investment in ranching can be low or nil at times, “you’ve just about got to have another source of income”—and Briscoe does: Oil discovered on some of his ranchland in Webb County has netted him a pretty penny.
One of the purchases Briscoe made in the sixties was as much a sentimental decision as a business decision: He bought the Chupadera, the ranch of his childhood. “That was a ranch that I loved as a kid and still do,” he says. “It’s different—sandy, with a lot of sandrock outcrop. To me, it’s a very special ranch. Mr. Sterling had hunting parties there. His friends would come down from Houston in private railroad cars, and he put my father in charge of the hunts. He brought in people like [Houston entrepreneur] Jesse Jones and [former governor] Dan Moody. He had an interest in politics.”
That interest rubbed off on Briscoe when he was a child. After Sterling was elected governor in 1931, he invited Dolph and his father to spend a weekend at the Governor’s Mansion. “He wanted me to sleep in Sam Houston’s bed,” Briscoe says. “From that day forward, my ambition was to go back. I liked the house, and I liked the bed.”
BESIDES THE CATARINA AND THE 40,000-ACRE CHUPADERA, the Briscoes own the Carla Ranch next to the Catarina, the Rio Frio north of Uvalde, farms in the Uvalde area, and ranches in La Salle, McMullen, and Culberson counties; they also lease about 100,000 acres at several ranches around Uvalde and in West Texas through a partnership with the grandsons of his longtime partner, the late R. J. “Red” Nunley. Four years ago Briscoe bought 33,000 acres in Marathon that were part of the historic Iron Mountain Ranch, which was started by Marathon’s founder, Albion Shepard, and he doesn’t rule out acquiring even more land, provided the right opportunity comes along and it makes business sense.
On the ranches they own, the Briscoes run 15,000 head of cattle, which is appropriate, considering Dolph Junior’s livestock legacy. “He’s probably done as much for the cattle industry as any single person,” says Don King, who was the general manager of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association for nearly thirty years. While a member of the Texas House from 1949 to 1957, Briscoe sponsored legislation to set up a statewide farm-to-market-road program so that farmers in rural areas had a paved network of roads to get their products to market. In 1960, while Briscoe was the president of the cattle raisers association, he led a state fight to eradicate the screwworm, a parasite that devastated herds in southern Texas and coastal states. When the Department of Agriculture balked at funding a plan to get rid of the screwworm, Briscoe called his friend U.S. senator Lyndon Johnson, who was then a candidate for vice president. Nearly forty years later, there’s been no recurrence of the infestation.
In addition to the cattle, the Briscoes own 14,000 Angora goats, all of which are on the Rio Frio Ranch. The goat business isn’t doing well in Texas because the market for mohair, once used in everything from car upholstery to movie theater seats, plummeted after the government ended a mohair subsidy program in 1996. “It’s sad to see that happen to an industry like Angora goats, which was very profitable for many years,” Briscoe says. “They took a lot more care, but we made a lot more money from goats than cattle.”
The Briscoes split their time between the Rio Frio (where they settled after they married in 1942 and raised their children), a house in Uvalde, a condominium in San Antonio, and the Catarina. The latter is their favorite retreat, partly because of its remarkable house. In 1980, after coveting it for years, Briscoe and his wife finally bought the three-story mansion, which had been built near the town of Catarina in 1902 by Charles Taft and equipped with oversized bathtubs to accommodate his oversized brother, President William Howard Taft. In a massive undertaking, the Briscoes had the house moved to their ranch and spent more than ten years restoring it. “It sat there for a long time and looked like a bag lady,” Janey Briscoe says. “But now I call it the Grand Lady.”
The big white house, with its cascading wood planks, columns, and balconies, is a startling contrast to the Catarina’s minimalist landscape, especially inside. The Briscoes have filled the house with English antique furniture, Texas memorabilia, and ornate gilt mirrors. A portrait of Sir John Briscoe (also by Gainsborough) that the Briscoes bought in England hangs in the hallway. They acquired many of the furnishings from the old home at Piedmont when it was sold to Lehrer and transplanted the family’s Eastern roots to the West once and for all. The mansion could be a stand-in for the big house at Reata, the ranch in Giant. In fact, Janey, with her jet-black hair and gracious but forthright manner, seems much like the beautiful and strong Leslie Benedict portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor in the movie. But while Leslie had to teach her husband some lessons in equality, the Briscoes have long worked as partners. They prize each other’s opinion and, even after fifty years of marriage, are touchingly tender. “Janey is my full partner in everything—in politics and in business,” Briscoe says.
Being the largest individual landowner in Texas, though, inevitably attracts attention—and scrutiny. After Briscoe took office in 1973, his family’s ranch holdings became the center of a school-tax dispute. A school superintendent mistakenly claimed that the valuations of land owned by Briscoe in Dimmit County were too low and hurt the local school district since Texas public schools are financed primarily with property taxes. Then there is the battle over water rights, which will likely be a big issue for a large landowner like Briscoe in the future. In 1996 Briscoe’s First State Bank put up $250,000 to fight a federal class-action lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club that sought to protect endangered species by restricting pumping from the Edwards Aquifer—the case is still pending. “Water is going to be one of the great issues before the Texas Legislature in the next session,” Briscoe acknowledges. “We need a policy concerning water in Texas, and we don’t have one.”
IN THE AFTERNOON, WE GET BACK ON BRISCOE’S plane and fly south, toward Mexico and over his beloved Chupadera. There’s nothing down below but sandy brush country swelling to the horizon. The Rio Grande glints in the sun as the plane turns west and flies along the border. Janey points out a spot on the river with a high bluff where the family sometimes picnics with the grandchildren. “They call it the ‘Edge of Texas,’” she says. It’s the edge of an empire that once pushed boundaries and still does today.
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