Camp Alexander
Roundup on the O2
The Historic O2 Ranch is just outside
of Big Bend National Park, and has some of the most beautiful and rugged
terrain in Texas.
Fall 2007 Photos Spring 2008 Photos
Paula ‘s Story of
her first Roundup
History of the O2 Ranch from the Handbook of Texas
at UT Austin
The O2 Ranch was for many years one of the largest
in the Trans-Pecos. The brothers E. L. and Alfred S. Gage registered the O2
brand in Brewster and Presidio counties in September 1888 and sold it to
William W. Turney in 1891. Turney established the O2 Ranch in the Green Valley
area of western Brewster County in 1892; the basis of his operation was
supposedly a herd of 300 high-grade shorthorn cattle brought by John Beckwith
to the Peņa Colorado area in 1878. In the 1920s part of the O2 Ranch lay on the
Alpine-Terlingua road, forty-five miles south of Alpine. The ranch placed two
water troughs at this spot, one inside the fence for cattle and one outside the
fence, beside the road, for travelers. These troughs became a well-known local
landmark and were used by freighters. From 1905 to 1936, under the management
of Turney's nephew Henry T. Fletcher, the O2 averaged between 10,000 and 12,000
high-grade Hereford cattle on 250,000 to 300,000 acres in Brewster and Presidio
counties. By August 1936, however, Turney had run into financial difficulties
trying to consolidate all the land in his pasture into a solid block, and the
Aetna Life Insurance Company took over the ranch. Five years later the Lykes
Brothersqv Steamship Company bought
the ranch, and in the early 1950s the 264,555 acres of O2 Ranch land in
Brewster and Presidio counties made it the eleventh-largest ranch in Texas and
the sixth-largest ranch made up of one block of land. Lykes Brothers operated
the ranch with Caven Woodward as manager until 1965, when the company began
leasing the land to other ranchers.