Searching for the 'American' breed of cattle

The conversation started out, “You don’t know me but I’m on sort of a fishing expedition.”

I had heard that opening gambit before and I usually relished what was to come. As I get ready to give up my career at the Roosevelt County Chamber of Commerce, those conversations will be one of the things I miss.

Anyway, the fellow on the phone told me the object of his fishing trip was to try and locate anyone who might still own cattle of a certain breed called the American breed.

I said that was the bison cross breed that Art Jones developed on the Portales Springs property east of Portales.

This fellow began to get really excited over the phone and said that I was the first person he’d talked to in a while that knew anything about the breed. I quickly cautioned him that I didn’t really know anything much about the breed, but I had vague memories of the banker/rancher Mr. Jones and his new breed that locals often referred to as beefalo, though he called them the American breed.

My caller on the phone explained that his grandfather and/or father had bought stock from Jones years ago and brought the cattle to their ranch in Shawnee, Okla. He explained his family now had that same ranch and he remembered growing up having the buffalo cross breed on that ranch. He said they were eventually sold off, but the family was hoping to find some if they still exist and run them on the ranch again.

I told him I was pretty sure no one in the area had them but I would check around and see what I could turn up. And I explained I also wrote a column in the newspaper and might write about them to see if anyone responded.

I naturally called Betty Williamson, the only rancher I know who is also a keen researcher and maybe knows more people in this county than I do. She got back to me at a basketball game and said she’d searched it and asked who I thought last wrote about the breed in the newspaper. I guessed Gordon Greaves, she said nope, it was Karl Terry.

I knew right away there wasn’t going to be a lot of research behind that post. She said I made brief mention of it in a really prose-filled column I did after touring the Portales Springs site with the late author and pioneer Ruth Burns.

Williamson said she remembered that Danny Woodward was a nephew to Art Jones and had contacted him to find out if any of the family was around. She got a phone number for Art’s son, who had managed the family herd in Texas. I haven’t been able to get that number to dial through so far.

In the weak research I was able to do prior to this column I listened to one of the oral histories of Roosevelt County recorded with Art Jones and Harold Henson that talked about the development of the breed.

“They were thriftier and immune to all kinds of disease,” said Jones in the recording. “They’ll go miles and eat coarser kinds of grass.”

He talked about, how at that time, in 1974, that the American housewife was demanding leaner beef. He said his research led him to believe that Americans were better clothed, sheltered and fed than the first inhabitants of this country and probably didn’t need as much fat.

He said early on his father had worked with a fellow named Buffalo Jones trying to cross beef cattle with bison and that later a local man named Bill Dunlap tried and all had failed. He said on the recording he knew it could be done and he kept working at it.

The cross he finally arrived at was ½ Brahman, ¼ Charolais, 1/16 Hereford, 1/16 Durham and 1/8 bison. In the recording (in 1974) he commented that they had their best year ever with the herd and had sold cattle to 22 different states that year.

Very little to no recent mention of the breed is available online and it is possible, maybe even likely that they don’t exist any longer for some reason or another. If they’re out there I know a fellow who would like to find them. Drop me an email if you have a lead and I’ll pass it along.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

[email protected]