The head of a longhorn mounted in the lobby of Reata.

Longhorns are important in Texas history because they were just about the only living thing that thrived in Texas other than rattlesnakes and Commanches. Those puny eastern cows couldn't find enough forage to survive. Longhorns, by contrast, will happily eat cactus, thorns and all, and dry brush. They do have a temper, though, but so would you if you were living on cactus.

However, you needed a lot of land to feed even longhorns. The Mexican government awarded vast state-sized tracts of Texican land to settlers they called impresarios if they would develop them. Even when those tracts were broken up into huge ranches, those ranches were bigger than some small states. When oil was discovered, those land-rich but cash-poor ranchers became millionaires selling oil leases to wildcatters drilling wells on their land.