Farmers, Ranchers, the Land and the Falls - Texas Parks & Wildlife ...

Farmers, Ranchers, the Land and the Falls
meadow and pumped in water from the Pedernales to form Duck Lake. Though
C.A., Harriet and their guests hunted deer and turkeys for food and diversion,
the Circle Bar became a wildlife refuge as much as it was a working ranch. By
1970, when the land was sold to the state, perhaps 800 to 1,000 deer roamed the
ranch, and the area enjoyed the largest concentration of wild turkeys in Texas. 86
Despite their conservationist views, the Wheatleys’ experience in the oil fields also
shaped their outlook, and in 1960 they allowed the Phillips Pipe Line Company
to lay a pipeline across the southern portion of the Circle Bar. 87
Figure 29. The area now covered by Duck Lake just before it was bulldozed to create
the lake in 1958. From left: Raymond Smith (Harriet’s brother); Pearl East, Harriet’s
daughter; Raymond Stewart, a hired hand who at that time lived with his wife in the
“foreman’s quarters” over the garage at the Wheatley “manse”; and C.A. Wheatley.
Photo courtesy of Sherill East, Diana L. Cooper, and Candace K. Sandefur.
The Wheatleys seemed to have known little or nothing about the Wilsons,
the Welches, the Joneses, or most of the other people who had once lived on the
property. 88 But they did make an effort to preserve some of the evidence of the
“old settlers” they imagined once lived there. The graveyard on what had been
Greene Wilson’s property had suffered from years of neglect by the time the
Wheatleys found it in the late 1930s. To protect some of the graves from cattle
hooves, they built a small wire fence there. C.A.’s nephew, who styled himself
C.A. Wheatley (the Younger), visited the ranch during the late 1930s and early
1940s. According to him, the graveyard was visited as late as 1940 by “a woman
who had family there” and “drove a very old car.” 89 It is possible that this was
Betsy Trammell, T.J. Trammell’s wife who, as noted above, died in 1953 and was
buried in the nearby Henly cemetery.
36