The original establishment of this New Mexico Ranch was made by Francis (Frank) Divers. In the fall of 1884, Divers, a native of Missouri who ranched in Mexico, drove 1,200 head of longhorn cattle out of West Texas, past the site of Hobbs, on to Monument Springs to water, graze, and rest several days before moving southwest. Mr. Divers had hired Bill Oden at San Angelo, Texas and he became top hand and an indispensable man. Their destination was Dug Springs, apparently carved from the sand by Indians. These springs had been discovered and named by Col. William Rufus Shafter in 1875. It was located 20 miles south of Monument Springs in a small salt grass valley. There were three springs a few feet apart. Indians had long camped there and there and had dug wells six feet deep and four feet across. Water stood three or four feet deep in these wells. Col. Shafter estimated that they would water a thousand or more horses. His 300 head depleted the pools, but they were refilled within two hours.
Divers and Oden arrived at the springs with the herd and found the location already claimed by two buffalo hunters, Louis and Guyat Faulkner. Divers offered them $250.00 in gold for their claim which they accepted and Dug Springs Ranch was born.
During most of 1885 Divers and his cowboys, as they had time, built a permanent house for the rancher and his bride. The walls, constructed of mud compacted and dried in wood molds or forms, rested on foundations of rock and mud. (This foundation is the only thing visible today). The only lumber used was brought in from Midland, TX, by wagon for adding a roof. It was only two rooms. Oden and the other ranch hands lived in wagons and dugouts.
Soon Dug Springs Ranch became the T A X Ranch, assuming its name from the Divers cattle brand. Shortly thereafter, Oden and another TAX cowboy, Henry Cummins, bought a one-sixth interest in the ranch.
Until 1889 TAX Ranch was located in the political unit of Lincoln County, which took in almost all of southeastern New Mexico. Some Llano ranchers were as far as 200 miles from the county seat at the village of Lincoln. The 1889 legislature in Santa Fe brought local government closer to the plains ranchers by organizing Eddy and Chaves counties out of Lincoln County’s southeastern territory.
In 1893, Cummins sold his interest back to Divers.
Col. C.W. Merchant and Col. J.H. Parramore bought the TAX Ranch from Divers in 1897. The sale contract gave Merchant and Parramore grazing rights to all the land between the Pecos River on the west, to the 84 Ranch on the east. The land was not sold, as it was owned by the Federal Government in Territorial New Mexico. Divers sold his improvements: the ranch house and four watering places know as Headquarters Well, West Well, North Well, and East Well. These waterings were scattered about six miles apart.
To stock this ranch, Parramore and Merchant—as the cattle company was called—brought from their Arizona ranch on the San Simon River near the little town of the same name, a total of 4,016 head of cattle over a period of three years.
Mack and Will Merchant, the two youngest sons of C.W. Merchant were sent from their home in Abilene to look after the New Mexico ranch, neither being married.
In 1902 Parramore and Merchant dissolved their partnership. Parramore took the Arizona ranch and Merchant the New Mexico ranch, which he called C.W. Merchant & Sons. This same year, C.W. Merchant sent John Doithit and his family, Lige Emberson and his family, and his two oldest sons to Carlsbad by train to look after the San Simon Ranch, as it was now called. C.W. Merchant had bought the large nine-bedroom McMillan home for them there.
The large frame two-story house at the ranch headquarters was built in 1903 by a carpenter supervisor and six or eight cowboys. The two families lived at the ranch in the summer and in Carlsbad the rest of the year for the children to go to school.
The ranch headquarters house burned July 9, 1936, with nothing salvaged. The men came in that night from the pastures and found that even the yard fence had burned.
A Mexican man named Pearl was hired to make adobe bricks to use in building the new house. The outside walls were adobe, and 20 inches thick. The upstairs had two L-shaped rooms and was used as a bunkhouse. The plasterer was an expert, as there is not a single crack and the paint never peeled.
C.W. Merchant & Sons was incorporated in 1911 and renamed The Merchant Livestock Company.
The ranch is still owned by descendants of C.W. Merchant. His great-great-grandsons, Clabe and Tommy Pearson are President and Vice President of the corporation. Clabe’s and Tommy’s children are also stockholders, and several of them and their spouses live and work on the ranch.
[Source: “Lea County Families and History, Then and Now”, Vol II by Billie Pearson]
THE MERCHANT LIVESTOCK CO. 