JA Ranch Founded

Photograph shows cowboys tending a herd of watering cattle on the JA ranch in the Texas panhandle. To the left in the background is a photographer's wagon with a sign, "W. A. Harper, Special Photographer, St. Louis Exposition 1903." (Library of Congress)

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1876, Charles Goodnight and John G. Adair drew up the contract that brought the JA Ranch into being. The JA is the oldest privately owned cattle ranch in the Panhandle.
Goodnight had met Adair, an English aristocrat interested in going into the cattle business, in Denver. Adair agreed to furnish the capital Goodnight needed to build up his "Home Ranch" in Armstrong County. Continued