The History of the Four Sixes Ranch in Texas

Courtesy of Burnett Oill, Inc.

It would be impossible to tell the history of Burnett Oil Co., Inc., without recounting its relationship to the Four Sixes Ranch and Burnett Ranches, LLC. Together, these businesses and the family that founded them form the basis of one of the most fascinating stories in Texas history.

Burnett Oil Co., Inc., an experienced and well-regarded operator in the Permian and other basins, is privately owned and operated by Anne Burnett Windfohr Marion. Burnett Oil Co, Inc., operates producing properties in Southeast New Mexico (Loco Hills region in Eddy County), West Texas (Sand Hills region of Crane County), on the Triangle and 6666 Headquarters Ranches, the Fort Worth Basin, the Anadarko Basin of Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, the Appalachian Basin in Southwest Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and has ongoing exploration efforts in several other states.

Anne W. Marion, great-grand daughter of Samuel “Burk” Burnett, often called “Little Anne”, formed Burnett Oil Co., Inc. in 1980, and became Chairman of the company. The properties of Windfohr Oil were a part of the foundation of the new company. These oil fields, in West Texas and Southeast New Mexico, were originally assembled and drilled by Robert F. Windfohr, a Burnett family member by marriage to Anne Marion’s mother, Anne Valliant Burnett Tandy.

However, the roots of the Burnett family interests in oil and gas began with the assembly of the Burnett Ranches by Samuel “Burk” Burnett. At age 10, in 1858, Burnett moved with his family to Denton County, Texas when conditions forced his parents—Jeremiah and Mary Turner Burnett—to leave Missouri. Although an experienced farmer, Jeremiah became involved in the cattle business, and Burk learned about cattle from a young age.

People grew up quickly in those days, so by age nineteen Burk had gone into business for himself. He started by rounding up wild longhorn cattle in South Texas and driving them north to sell. Then, in 1868, he purchased 100 head branded with “6666” from Frank Crowley of Denton. Title to the cattle included ownership of the brand, and Burnett realized the open-six design would be easy to fashion into irons, and the brand would be difficult to alter by cattle thieves. Thus was born an iconic brand that would come to represent much more than ownership of cattle.

At age twenty, Burk married Ruth B. Loyd, daughter of Martin B. Loyd, founder of the First National Bank of Fort Worth. Five years later, Burk survived the panic of 1873 by holding through the winter more than 1,100 steers he had driven to market in Wichita, Kansas. The next year, with the panic over, he sold the cattle for a $10,000 profit, an amount equivalent to Anne Burnett Windfohr Marion more than $200,000 in 2013. Following this experience, Burk became one of the first ranchers in Texas to buy steers and graze them for market.

During the next winter, he bought 1,300 cattle in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and drove them north up the Chisholm Trail to the open range grazing lands near the Little Wichita River. He quickly came to understand the importance of having control over the lands on which cattle fed, and with that in mind, Burk began buying property. He later built his first headquarters near what would become Wichita Falls.

A drought in the 1880s forced Burnett to search for grass to sustain his cattle, and when he discovered that Kiowa and Comanche tribal lands north of the Red River had not suffered from drought, he negotiated the lease of Indian lands. He made a deal with legendary Comanche Chief Quanah Parker (18451911) for access to 300,000 acres of grassland and, in the process, gained the friendship of the Comanche leader. Burk ran 10,000 head of cattle on the land until the end of the lease in the early 1900s.

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the end of the open range became apparent. The only protection the cowman had was to purchase private land on which to graze his What would eventually become Burnett Ranches, LLC, was founded by began around 1900 with the Samuel Burk Burnett purchase of the 8 Ranch near Guthrie in King County and the left, in 1870. He went Dixon Creek Ranch near Panon to be one of the handle. The 8 Ranch became the nucleus of the present-day richest cattlemen in Four Sixes Ranch. These two Texas. ranches, along with later ad- ditions, totaled one-third of a million acres.

Since 1900, Burk had maintained a home in Fort Worth, headquarters for his financial enterprises. He added to and developed his holdings, including building the Four Sixes Supply House, and a new headquarters in Guthrie. In 1917, Burk decided to build “the finest ranch house in West Texas” at Guthrie, at a cost of $100,000, an amount equal to more than $1.8 million in 2013. Prestigious architectural firm Sanguiner and Staats of Fort Worth designed the eleven bedroom home, built with stone quarried on the ranch, to serve as ranch headquarters, to house the ranch manager, and as a place for entertaining.

The Four Sixes Supply House was built several years before the main house. Burk lived in the back of the supply house until the main house was completed. His office remained in the supply house. In 1921, oil was discovered on Burk’s land near Dixon Creek in Hutchinson County in the Texas Panhandle. The Gulf No. 2 Burnett served as the discovery well of the giant Panhandle Oil Field. Drilling began in November 1920 and was completed in April 1921. The well was 3,052 feet deep, and 175 barrels were produced in the first twenty-five hours of pumping. It produced constantly for fifty years. This was the first oil well brought in on the Texas Panhandle Field, relatively small compared to future wells, one of which produced 10,000 barrels a day. Following this discovery, hundreds of people flooded the town of Panhandle. Oil field workers, lawyers, firefighters, and lumbermen altered the city’s look in short order. As drilling progressed in the 1920s, the West Panhandle Gas Field extended across most of Burnett’s Dixon Creek Ranch in adjacent Carson County to the south. West Panhandle later coalesced into the mega-giant Hugoton- Panhandle Gas Field, the largest natural gas field in North America. The town of Borger, Texas, often considered a Phillips Petroleum company town, was also an outgrowth of Panhandle Field development.

At the time of Burk’s death in 1922, Thomas Loyd Burnett, born December 10, 1871, was his only living child. Beginning as a ranch hand, Tom learned the cattle business in the 1880s and 1890s in Indian country between the Wichita Mountains. After attending school in Fort Worth, St. Louis, and the Virginia Military Institute, the sixteen year old began moving cattle on the Burk Burnett Ranch. Each autumn, he worked as a wagon hand in the Comanche- Kiowa Reservation.

Dynasty: The Ranch was founded by Samuel Burk Burnett left, in 1870. He went on to be one of the richest cattlemen in Texas.

He worked for five years as a line rider on his father’s ranch, which spread over more than 50,000 acres on the Red River. As he approached twenty-one, Tom was named wagon boss of the Nation (Indian Territory) Wagon. That same year, on October 8, 1891, he married Olive “Ollie” Lake of Fort Worth, and the couple lived at the Burnett Ranch House while Tom ran the Indian Territory unit of the Four Sixes Ranch. They had one daughter, Anne Valliant, born in 1900.

The 6666 Ranch, “one of the most storied outfits in Texas,” is world-renowned for its Black Angus cattle and American Quarter Horses. The three ranches today encompass 275,000 acres. According to Western Horseman, which profiled the ranch in a 2019 cover story

In 1910, Tom bought the 26,000 acre Triangle Ranch at Iowa Park. When Martin B. Loyd died in 1912, Tom inherited one-fourth of his grandfather’s Wichita County properties along with a large sum of money. Oil discoveries in the county added to his fortune. Tom continued to expand his Triangle holdings, purchasing five ranches in the next fifteen years, consolidating them into one vast range of more than 100,000 acres. Tom became a rodeo impresario, financing and promoting some of the biggest rodeos in the southeast, and developed a passion for good cow horses and later bred Palominos that he featured in fairs, parades, and rodeos.

George Humphreys, who began working on the Four Sixes Ranch in 1918 and retired fifty- two years later, served as the ranch’s third ranch manager, as sheriff of King County from 1928 to 1948, and overseer to the ranch’s horse operation. He turned the Four Sixes horses into the best in the country. Hollywood Gold, foaled on the Burnett Ranch in Iowa Park in 1940, became Humphreys favorite stud horse. Hollywood Gold’s offspring won cutting contests across the United States and brought top prices for breeding. Other than the discovery of oil, the most important development on the Four Sixes Ranch was the addition of an equine breeding program in the 1960s under Humphreys management. Since then, the ranch has become known for its world-class American quarter horses used for ranch work, arena competition, and the racetrack. Later, the Four Sixes horse operation included the famous racing stallion, Dash For Cash, one of the greatest sires in the history of racing Quarter Horses. His offspring have earned more than $40 million. Today, the Four Sixes is home to 15 to 20 of the top racing, performance, and ranch quarter horse stallions anywhere in the world.

Tom died on December 26, 1938, leaving his estate to his only child, Anne Valliant Burnett. His death arrived in the midst of a campaign to build a fortune equal to that of his father. Although he fell short of that objective, he became known in the cattle world as a pacesetter, described by friends as a man who represented the Old West and stood for its traditional ideals of generosity and rugged fair play. Throughout the Burnett family history, cattle have played an important role in their success and the success of the Four Sixes Ranch. Early on, Durhams and then Herefords were introduced to improve meat quality. Herefords played a large role in the ranch’s cattle program until, under Mike Gibson’s tenure as ranch manager, the ranch’s base of Hereford cows was phased out and replaced with a Black Angus program. As a cow/ calf operation, the ranch maintains a breeding herd of some 7,000 mother cows, and the Four Sixes reputation for quality makes it a frontrunner in the cattle industry.

DASH FOR CASH AQHA HALL OF FAME

Anne took the reins of the Burnett family fortune at the age of thirty-eight. Referred to as “Miss Anne,” she was known for her knowledge of cattle, horses, and fine art. At the urging of her daughter, Anne Tandy started the Burnett Foundation in 1978. She appointed Anne W. Marion to be President of the Foundation and she remains President today. The Burnett Foundation was funded with about $28 million initially. These funds did not come from oil and gas revenue, but from the Charles Tandy estate. Since the inception, the Burnett Foundation has given away about $500 million, and today it is worth about $230 million.

Although schooled in the East and raised in a society atmosphere, Miss Anne valued her ranching heritage, dividing her time between her home near the Shady Oaks Country Club in Fort Worth and the Triangle Ranch that her father established near Iowa Park, Texas. Like her father, Miss Anne became a keen judge of horses and cattle, and along with her second husband, James Goodwin Hall, assisted in formation of the American Quarter Horse Association. She also helped found the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame and was the first woman named honorary vice president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association and American Quarter Horse Association.

Anne Burnett Windfohr Marion 1938 - 2020

Miss Anne had only one child, often known as “Little Anne,” from her marriage to James Goodwin Hall. In 1969, Miss Anne married Charles Tandy, founder of the Tandy Corporation, and that same year a large oil discovery on the Guthrie property led to another rise in the Burnett family fortune. More than 100 million barrels of oil have been produced from these fields, and the Triangle Ranch, covering parts of Cottle, Foard, and Hardeman Counties, also had several significant oil and gas fields. Although the Triangle Ranch surface was sold in 1989, the mineral rights were retained.

Prior to his death in 1922, Miss Anne’s grandfather, Captain Samuel “Burk” Burnett, willed the bulk of his estate to Miss Anne in a trusteeship for her yet unborn child. At the time of Miss Anne’s death on January 1, 1980, her daughter, Little Anne—Anne W. Marion— inherited her great-grandfather Captain Burnett’s ranch holdings through directives stated in his will. She then sold the Triangle Ranch her grandfather, Tom Burnett, had developed and donated the Burnett home in Iowa Park to the city for use as a library. In addition to the Triangle Ranch, other parcels were sold, leaving the two main ranches—the 6666 Ranch near Guthrie and the Dixon Creek Ranch near Panhandle totaling 275,000 acres.

“Little Anne” is now known by the more adult name of Anne Burnett Windfohr Marion. She is president of Burnett Ranches, LLC, which includes the Four Sixes Ranch. She also serves as president of the Burnett Foundation and Burnett Companies and is chairman of the Burnett Oil Co., Inc.

The Windfohr name originates from her stepfather, Robert Frairy Windfohr (1894- 1964), who married her mother in 1942 and adopted “Little Anne.” Originally from Quantico, Maryland, he moved to Breckenridge in 1921 and formed an oil partnership with James P. Nash of Austin. He drilled his first well with Nash near Graham. The 4,300-foot venture—called a record for North Texas—was dry. But he later drilled some 350 producing wells with Nash and Herman Brown of Austin, including a 1,000 barrel a day producer in the Graham area drilled in 1930.

Windfohr was an outspoken conservationist and a member of the committee that championed the cause in Texas in the 1930s. He also fought to keep foreign oil from flooding the domestic market and sought the end of price controls in the 1950s. He fought just as hard on various fronts, including the arts in Fort Worth, helping guide construction of the Fort Worth Art Museum during his many terms as president of the Fort Worth Art Association. As a young girl, “Little Anne” spent summers on the Four Sixes, earning the respect of

the cowboys as she learned to ride horses and perform ranch chores like the cowhands did. Ollie Lake, who owned a home in Fort Worth, provided her granddaughter with the emotional support she needed and further established in the young girl a love for ranching and its traditions. Anne was educated at Briarcliff Junior College in New York, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Geneva in Switzerland, where she studied art history.

In 1988, Anne married John Louis Marion, honorary chair of Sotheby’s Inc. She has one daughter, Anne “Windi” Phillips Grimes, who also has one daughter, Anne “Hallie” Grimes. Anne assumed management of the Four Sixes in 1980. Not since Captain Burnett founded and built the Four Sixes more than a century ago has any family member taken as much interest in the ranches as she, according to her former, longtime ranch manager, the late J. J. Gibson. Anne is highly regarded as an arts patron and shrewd businesswoman. Her husband is proud of her strong will and determination and her ability to move easily from social settings to business. She is a director emeritus at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum and was inducted into its Hall of Great Westerners in 2009. Her greatgrandfather, Samuel “Burk” Burnett; her grandfather, Tom Burnett; and her mother, Anne Valliant Burnett Tandy also are Hall of Fame inductees. Her

Horseman, which profiled the ranch in a 2019 cover story

The 6666 Ranch, “one of the most storied outfits in Texas,” is world-renowned for its Black Angus cattle and American Quarter Horses. The three ranches today encompass 275,000 acres. According to Western Horseman Magazine.

own honors include the Golden Deed Honoree as selected by the Fort Worth Exchange Club, 1993; The Charles Goodnight Award, 1993; induction into the Texas Business Hall of Fame, 1996; The Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts Award, 1996; The American Quarter Horse Association Merle Wood Humanitarian Award, 1999; The National Golden Spur Award, 2001; The Boss of the Plains Award from the National Ranching Heritage Center, 2003; and induction into the American Quarter Horse Association Hall of Fame, 2007. Anne Marion is the guiding spirit of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. She is also a long time board member of the Kimbell Art Foundation. She also founded and remains chairman of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

While her civic and cultural activities extend throughout Texas and the nation, her deepest commitment is to her birthright and the continuing success of the historic Burnett Ranches, LLC, Burnett Oil Co., and Four Sixes Ranch, where superbly bred cattle and champion horses grace its pastures and oil flows freely from its depths

While her civic and cultural activities extend throughout Texas and the nation, her deepest commitment is to her birthright and the continuing success of the historic Burnett Ranches, LLC, Burnett Oil Co., and Four Sixes Ranch, where superbly bred cattle and champion horses grace its pastures and oil flows freely from its depths.

Anne Burnett Windfohr Marion, whose epic Texas life included prominence as a leading rancher and horsewoman, philanthropist, and an internationally respected art collector and patron of the arts, died Tuesday in California after a battle with lung cancer. She was 81.

The news of her passing inspired tributes from her native Fort Worth and around the nation.

“Laura and I mourn the passing of Anne Marion,” President George W. Bush said on Wednesday. “She was a true Texan, a great patron of the arts, a generous member of our community, and a person of elegance and strength. Texans have lost a patriot, and Laura and I have lost a friend. We send our sympathies to her husband John, her daughter, Windi, and to her grandchildren who love and miss her.”