THE THIRD GENERATION of his family to ranch along the Texas-New Mexico line, Bob Jones worries how many more generations can hold out in country that has seen its inhabitants dispersed by military expansion in addition to the other pressures that ranching families face.

Deep Sense Of History Ties
Bob Jones To Family Ranch

By David Bowser

CROW FLATS, N.M. — Bob Jones was born a century too late, but because of people like him, the cattle industry and those involved in it will exist well into the next century.

After high school, Jones headed for what was then New Mexico A&M, now New Mexico State University. Although he scored high on his entrance exams, Jones found himself discussing his academic future at the university with his dean at the end of his first semester.

After a short review of his grades, the dean looked at the young engineering major and asked him what he really wanted to do with his life.

Jones replied in his straightforward manner that all he really wanted was a fast horse, some good cattle and lots of grass for grazing.

"I never wanted to do anything else," Jones insists, driving across the T6, a historic ranch here straddling the Texas-New Mexico line north of Dell City.

His older brother went off to do other things, but Jones came home.

"And I've been here ever since," he says.

That was 1949.

Here on the Otero Mesa is what Jones calls home. The 160-section ranch consists of deeded land in Texas and New Mexico with some school lands and federal lands under the Bureau of Land Management in New Mexico.

The region gets maybe 12 inches of rain annually, 15 inches in a good year. These grasslands will carry 10 animal units per section.

"I think we do a little better running a little less," Jones says, turning his crewcab Ford pickup toward an ancient watering hole and a family cemetery.

The Jones family was originally from Wales. They came to the New World and settled in Biloxi, Miss., before moving west to Texas around Bandera, then on to New Mexico.

His grandfather, Tom Jones, ran away from home when he was nine years old to be a cowboy, and by the 1870s was part of the old Duncan Guard, a militia group formed to fight the Indians along the Arizona-New Mexico line. He had driven a herd of cattle from Texas and had gotten to near present-day Truth or Consequences, but was attacked by Geronimo and retreated to the Sacramento Mountains north of where Jones lives today.

"The Indians were awful bad, so he couldn't have his family out here," Jones said. "He went back to Texas, but they came back in 1892. My dad was born over there on the Black River in a covered wagon that year."

His family settled in the Crow Flats area in 1906.

"We've been in this country ever since," Jones said.

An admirer of Charles Goodnight, Tom Jones sent his son, Bob's father, to Goodnight Academy in the Texas Panhandle.

"Daddy played football there," Jones recounts. "I have a picture of him on the team. They rolled a cannonball down the steps of the girls' dorm."

Like a lot of ranches in the area, Jones' cow-calf operation up until a few decades ago was basically all Hereford, with a scattering of black baldies.

In deference to the rugged country, Jones began adding some Brahman blood to the mix, and today he's putting Charolais bulls on them. He prefers to limit the Brahman influence to between a quarter and an eighth.

"Not any more than that," he says. "They sell better."

He says they used to shoot for a 400 pound weaning weight. Today, with their crossbreeding program, they're looking for 600 pound weaning weights.

"Our calves top the market," he says.

Most of the cattle here were born here, Jones notes, because cattle that are brought in don't do as well.

"It takes time to acclimate to this country," he explains.

Jones believes his cattle today are healthier, too. There's not as much disease as there was when he was growing up. To help keep that process working, he and some of the other area ranchers "neighbor" a little on their cattle as well as their labor.

"There's a bunch of us out here that work together," he explains, and when they go through and brand, they'll usually pick some of the calves from the other herds. That way they get the top of the production curve from the different herds and keep them in the area to ensure hybrid vigor.

"It works pretty good," he says.

Jones is happy with his crossbreeding program, believing his cattle use the country better and need less feed.

"They travel over it," he says. "They don't eat it out as they leave the water. About once a week, all of them get up and go all the way around the pastures."

He says they're easier to gather, too.

"You can cover twice the ground in half the time," he insists. "The other thing, too, is that they're gentle."

While some of his neighbors retain a few of their calves and feed them out, Jones usually sells all his calves. When there was a bad drouth through here for three or four years in a row, his calf crop got scattered out and he found himself selling some in the fall and some in the spring.

"We're still suffering from that," he says.

They're suffering from other things as well, and Jones worries about the future.

"The number of people living out here is going down all the time," Jones says.

The reason for that in Jones' lifetime is the expansion of the military in southern New Mexico. What used to be ranches are now part of Holloman Air Force Base, White Sands Proving Grounds or the McGregor Missile Range.

"The county now has less than half the ranches it used to," Jones explains. "Now their hitting us with this low-level flying deal. We're fighting that."

The Air Force has proposed low-flying maneuvers for their bombers, flights at only 100 feet or so from early in the morning until late at night.

"It looks like an airspace grab," Jones says. "We're not just talking about a nuisance someplace that won't bother anybody."

A similar situation is shaping up across West Texas from Abilene to Fort Davis, and possibly across Eastern New Mexico and into the Texas Panhandle.

Jones helped form the Paragon Foundation, a public interest group to help protect private property rights in the region.

Although Crow Flats is home and he hates leaving it, he often finds himself in Santa Fe or Washington battling for the livestock industry and a way of life.

"We still do everything horseback," Jones says. "You can't hardly do it any other way."

While Jones spends much of his time working for the livestock industry and worrying about the future, he draws on the past.

"The Butterfield Trail went right up through here," he says, pulling up at the base of a huge granite outcropping known as the Cornudas de los Alamos, Spanish for "horns of the cottonwood." It has long served as a watering spot.

"At one time there was a stage station here."

Some of the Ninth Cavalry, the Buffalo Soldiers, were stationed there after the Civil War to protect the station and travelers from Indian attack. Soldiers were also stationed there well before the Civil War to protect those traveling to and from the gold fields of California.

But its history goes back long before that. Jones tells of slick places where animals rubbed against the rocks to scratch themselves. The strange thing is that some of those places may be 20 feet above the ground.

"Mammoths and mastodons," Jones explains. "They took some samples of that and it had animal hair and oil in it."

There's a lake about a third of the way up. The top is grassland.

"There's always been water here," Jones says.

The granite outcropping is an important place for the Jones family.

"We have a Fourth of July picnic here every year," Jones says. "My boy plays the fiddle and there are others that come and make music. We grill hamburgers or steaks. It's always cool here. It's just like it was air conditioned."

There is also a family cemetery there.

Back through a narrow passageway at the base of the mountain, enclosed on either side and overhead by huge boulders, is Thorn's Well. According to a date scratched into the stone, it was established in 1852, but there is evidence that it may well date to Spanish exploration two to three centuries earlier.

Other names are inscribed here as well, such as "Joe glover, 1853; Henry, October, 1885." Nearby is "U.S."

"We think that was the Army," Jones says.

There are such names as Texas Ranger Rip McKinney.

"He was here and stuck his name on the wall," Jones says.

Another name, "Frank Gentry, Arkansas, July, 1852," belonged to a man buried just up the trail.

"He didn't last long after he wrote this," Jones says. "He died between here and there. It's about 15 miles. I don't know if somebody killed him or what."

There are also a number of brands and Indian petroglyphs. Strangely, there are no Hispanic names.

There is the name "L. McVey, 1895."

"I knew him when I was a kid," Jones says.

The hills below the T6 are named for him.

"I don't know how long he lived here," Jones continues. "He was one of the first people to come here. He worked for my uncle when I was just a little boy."

The well was there when an expedition led by a young army officer named Randolph Marcy came through, mapping the region. Marcy's expedition became the basis for a handbook that served frontier travelers for years to come.

"He came through here with a troop of cavalry in 1849, and I've got his logs," Jones says. "The well was here, and it was full of water. The was here then and they watered their horses there."

Scratched on a rock outside the entrance to the well is "Garden of Eden."

"It probably looked like that when they got here," Jones says.

Nobody knows for sure how long the well has been there. Some people think the Indians dug it and rocked it. Jones says he thinks it might have been the Spanish, is because it looks like their work.

For centuries, the outcrop was an Indian stronghold because of the view and protection it provided, and because of the water there. The outcropping is on a tribal road going from the Davis Mountains in West Texas to the Sacramento Mountains in New Mexico.

There's evidence of three stone houses at the edge of the outcropping.

"We think it was a way station for one of the early merchants from El Paso," Jones says. "At Fort Davis, on old maps, there is a warning to all cavalry troops to watch out for this area because it was an Indian stronghold. They killed an Austrian duke that come over and joined the Texas Rangers in a battle right around the mountain there."

The Apache fought another pitched battle with the Ninth Cavalry just south of the outcropping.

"There's a lot of history here," Jones says, and if he has his way, there will still be a lot of history to be made here in centuries to come.