The King Ranch

We left Brownsville & our new Canadian friends and headed north.  Our next stop was Kingsville, just west of Corpus Christi and home to the King Ranch.  We stayed at a nice campground, Natures Own RV Park, on the south end of town. 

First, we headed into town to the King Ranch Museum.

The museum is in a beautiful brick building with lots of ironwork on the windows and doors.  It was a good place to start because it dealt with the history of the King Ranch and its legacy. Unfortunately, I couldn't take any pictures in the museum.

 

A BRIEF BIO & SOME INTERESTING FACTS

* Richard King was born in New York City & was indentured to a jeweler as a young boy.  He hated it and ran off to sea, where he worked his way up through the ranks and became a captain.  When his good friend and fellow riverboat captain, Mifflin Kenedy, contacted him with a job offer taking supplies up & down the Rio Grande River, he came to Texas.  He began buying up land around the Santa Getrudis Creek to establish a cattle ranch.  The Santa Getrudis Ranch was established in 1853.

Captain King was married to Henrietta and they had five children.  Their son in law, Bob Kleberg, was instrumental in helping to run the ranch, especially after Richard's death in 1885.

  *At its largest, the King Ranch was comprised of 1.2 million acres

*The King Ranch is also involved in cotton & milo farming, oil, hardware, citrus groves, sod farms, pecan groves, saddle making and Ford trucks

*The King Ranch has developed 2 breeds of cattle - the Santa Gertrudis & the Santa Clara

*The King Ranch were one of the first Quarter horse breeders and their stallion, Whimpy P1, is entry #1 in the Quarter horse registry.

*The King Ranch also bred racing Thoroughbreds, including 1946 Triple Crown winner, Asault.

 

The museum had a lot of pictures of the original interior of the main house, and some very cool old photos of ranching taken way back.  They had some of the original drawings for the Tiffany Stained Glass windows in the house, and some of the wicker furniture that Tiffany also designed.  The saddle collection was beautiful, too, but my favorite was the automobile designed to be driven around the ranch.

I was able to find this photo of it online.  It had a heavy duty frame and springs so it could be driven over the rocky ground.  There are rifles stored at the reach of the driver and passenger, and under them is a compartment for ammo.  On the hood, over each headlight is a cradle for game, or you can put a seat on it so you can ride on the hood and shoot.  In the back seat, there is a fold down bar with room for everything. 

 

Next, we headed out to the King Ranch Visitor Center to go on tour of the ranch itself.

The visitor's center was in quite the cool building, very ranch-like!

This was a neat sign about the Quarter horses bred on the ranch.

The dinner bell.

Since the ranch is so large, we boarded a bus & our driver, Carl, took us on about a 10 mile tour.  He was fantastic.

The longhorns were enjoying the sun.

These are the Santa Gertrudis.  They were developed breeding Brahma to Scottish Shorthorns - 3/8 Brahma-5/8 Shorthorn.  They are a deep red, big, muscly cattle - our driver says they are delicious (he also said longhorns are like chewing shoe leather).

Lots of pastures with  horses. They are all either bay or sorrel.

The Ranch House from across the pasture.  This is the third house on this spot.  The first was just a small shack, then a small house that was added on to as more children came.  When it burned down, Henrietta & Robert Kleberg planned and built this new huge house.  Many members of the family lived there and relatives still use the house today.

There are tons of birds & wildlife on the ranch.  This was a white breasted hawk.

Here are two javelinas.  We saw a lot of them - some huge groups with babies.

Didn't see any of these!

This old silo was made out of glazed ceramic tile!

One of many "swing gates".  Carl said they were designed by engineers who were too lazy to get out to open and close the gates.  You drive up and bump the gate and it swings around and closes behind you.

One of the original buildings from the day when it was the Santa Gertrudis Ranch.

A row of one of the many brick stables.

Houses where the ranch hands could live (and some still do).

The grounds of the main house and the main house.

We weren't allowed to stop at the main house, so excuse these photos - I had to take them on the fly.

One of the highlights of our tour was the chance to visit with "Lolo", a fifth generation ranch hand at King Ranch.  He was 79 years old, and just as spry as can be.  He told us about being one of the first to ride the Thoroughbred, Assault, and what a cattle roundup was like. 

Lolo was a descendant of the original ranch hands, Mexicans who left their village to come and work on Captain King's cattle ranch.  They were called Kinenos - King's men.

One of the things Lolo showed us was this loom, where the saddle blankets were made.  He also talked about the brands on the cattle and the horses.  King Ranch is know by its running W brand.  No one really seems to know why Captain King chose that brand - but it is on everything. We stopped at the King Ranch Saddle Shop in town, and believe me, you can find it on everything.  The saddle shop is full of all kinds of western doo dads, beautiful clothing, jewelry, cowboy boots, and some of the coolest furniture & accessories ever. 

We also took a trip to the town of Sarita, where the Kenedy Ranch Museum is located.  Mifflin Kenedy and Richard King remained friends all their lives, and this little museum is a wonderful visual depiction of early Texas and the ranchers.

The Kenedy Land Company building houses the museum.

These colorful murals tell the story of Kenedy and south Texas.

The numbers under the mural were for the audio device that told us about the history, so we didn't have to read everything!

There were also these lifelike sculptures of the Kenedy family and their workers.

Ranch hands & family.

Kenedy in his office.

The vault door

This is the Kenedy's daughter, Sarita, who loved the ranch and everything to do with it.

 

Sarita as an adult - isn't she beautiful?

Mifflin and his wife only had two children - and due to illnesses, both of them were sterile.  Sarita & her husband contracted and influenza that made them both sterile & her brother had mumps as an adult.  Because there was no one to inherit the estate, Sarita the majority of it to the church.

This is a statue of Brother Leo, who was the monk who was an advisor to Sarita.

 

 

 

 

 

Birds & Battlefields

Because Brownsville is on the Gulf, it was bitterly fought over by Mexico & the U.S.  It is also the site of the last battle of the Civil War.  There is a very nice bike path from the Veterans Memorial in town, past old and new cemeteries, ending at Palo Alto Battlefield, where a smaller group of U.S. soldiers drove back the Mexican army.

 

There is a trail through the battlefield site, with replica cannons and Mexican & U.S. flags flying at various locations to indicate how the battle was fought.

 

Illustrated markers explained what happened in each area and information about the weapons, uniforms and people.

It was very interesting and a great bike ride!

 

Another thing that the Rio Grande Valley is know for is bird watching!  Because of its mild temperatures, many birds winter in the area.  Also, birds that migrate to Central and South America will stop in the valley to rest and eat before the long flight over the Gulf.  One day we drove out to the Sabal Palm Sanctuary.  Sabal Palms are native to Mexico and only the lower Rio Grande Valley.  At one time there were over  60,000 acres of palm forest - now there are less than 100.  This sanctuary was at one time part of Rancho San Tomas, now known as the Rabb Plantation.  Its visitors center is this beautiful Plantation house.

This type of architecture is very unusual in this part of the country.

There was a fireplace in each room for cool winter nights.  The windows were original and reached from floor to ceiling.  No kitchen - cooking was done in a separate building.

There was a great set of trails through the "jungle".

This moss hanging off the trees was amazing.

Of course, the palm trees were beautiful.

Overhead, the vultures were circling.  There were hundreds of them, just floating around, looking for dead stuff!

Here are some of them sitting in a tree.

Part of the trail was a walkway through a wetland.  Here we saw a Green Kingfisher and our first Great Kiskadee.

These are such cool birds to see.  They are a little bigger than a robin with bright yellow breasts and kind of a rusty color back, tail and wings.  All topped with that black & white head.

In one area of the sanctuary there were feeders and fruit to lure the birds. I was shocked to see these large birds up in the palms.

They look a little like a cross between a female turkey and a female pheasant.  They are game birds here, so they didn't stick around when we walked up.

 

One of my favorites was the Green Jays.

They are really this brightly colored!

 

Next, we took a trip out to the newest Texas State Park, Resaca de la Palmas.  It is located on what used to be ranch land and agricultural fields (lots of vegetables & sugar cane grown in this area).

They are working very hard to bring the area back to what it would have been, by removing invasive grasses and trees. 

Funny to see these cactus growing in amongst the mesquite.

Lots of prickly pears.  I'm not sure what the green tree is though.

Sabal Palms grow here too.

Loved the bark on this tree.

Of course, we were looking for birds. We saw two Altimira Orioles right as we started down the trail.  They are a little bigger and have more orange than Baltimore Orioles.

 Resaca de la Palmas is also home to the World Birding Center in Brownsville, so there are lots of birders in the park.  We met a couple on the trail by the Resaca. (A Resaca is a what is left of what used to be a small river running off of the Rio Grande.  In Minnesota we would call it a lake.)

There were 3 Cormorants on that dead tree.

We caught the tram for a ride back to the visitor's center.  There were more birders on it, and the driver was very well versed in birds and where to find them.  Everyone was really excited to see this Anhinga.

They look kind of like the Cormorants, only lighter in color and more streamlined.  I was excited to see him dive into the water and catch a fish!  When they swim, all that sticks out is their heads!

The tram driver pointed out this grassland.  It looks very much like an African savannah.  He said this was native grasses.  He pointed out quite a few other birds - more Kiskadees, Green Jays and lots of LBB (little brown birds).  (Honestly-that is a birding term!)

 

Back at the visitor's center they have these areas where you can hide and watch the birds through the holes in the fence!  We saw more Green Jays, lots of Cardinals...I tried to take pictures, but can't get nearly close enough.  Of all of the bird photos in this blog, only the cormorants & the vultures are mine - I had to get photos off the internet to show what we saw.

 

It was a fun day, we learned a lot, and if we decide to come back to the Rio Grande Valley, we will make it a point to visit other birding destinations - there are more than 30 listed!