The Legend
The legendary King Ranch, founded by the intrepid Captain Richard King in the early 1850s, is an iconic institution of almost mythic stature. Captain King’s business plan included taming what was, at the time, known as the Wild Horse Desert and starting a first class beef cattle operation. The stellar success of that early entrepreneurial venture on the range has assumed its rightful place as a major chapter the ranching annals of the American West, and Captain King’s original 12,500 acre spread on the Rincon de Santa Gertrudis now includes over 825,000 acres on four divisions in South Texas.
Before Richard King could consider the viability of his envisioned cattle operation, he had to concern himself with what the cattle would eat. Cattle need water and grass to live on the range.
So basic was the growing of nutritious grass on the King Ranch that in later years Dick Kleberg would remark that the ranch’s beef cattle were “machines to gather and sell grass…a big rack to hand the grass on.”
As the years rolled by, King Ranch diversified into many fields of endeavor from cattle breeding to horse racing to vegetable and citrus farming in South Florida.
With the same tenacity and care that Captain King exercised to ensure that his cattle would have good grass to eat and that it would be available year in and year out, the 20th century founders of King Ranch’s turfgrass business instituted practices that today have established them as some of the most respected and conscientious sod producers in the country. The expertise that King Ranch Turf honed in Florida has now returned to the state that witnessed the birth of Captain King’s fledgling cattle operation almost 160 years ago.
The Texas turfgrass operations also benefit from the hands-on, proven management practices that have made King Ranch’s Florida turfgrass operations such a success. We invite you to learn more about the history of King Ranch and where to find quality turfgrass in Florida and Texas today.
The quality of our turfgrass bespeaks the ranching values that echo forth from the era of the taming of the American West.