Over on our Facebook page, we get a lot of questions about the size of the Waggoner Ranch. People are curious — how can the Waggoner Ranch be the largest ranch under one fence in the United States? What about the King Ranch?
It’s true that the King Ranch holds more land than the Waggoner, coming in at around 825,000 acres. That land, however, is split between four neighboring parcels. The W.T. Waggoner Ranch is over 510,000 acres of contiguous land behind a single fence. While it isn’t the largest ranch in the United States (Vermejo Park Ranch is also larger in terms of acreage), it holds the record for the largest contiguous ranch.
The Waggoner Ranch started small in 1849, when Dan Waggoner started buying up land and cattle near Decatur, Texas. He soon moved the operation near Wichita Falls, where the ranch continued to grow. It now has 3 lakes, oil interests, and more than 26,000 acres in cultivation. The ranch spans 6 counties, and is larger than New York and Los Angeles combined.
Now that’s a Texas sized ranch.
Want to learn more about the history of this great Texas icon? Order the award-winning bookCowboys of the Waggoner Ranchtoday. Printed right here in the USA, this book chronicles the 26 working cowboys on the ranch before it sold in 2016. Books ship free in the United States every day.
