“It wasn’t some- thing discussed in the present sense. “My family is very proud of our history, but it was always something we did a long time ago,” Knowles says. An allergy to horses kept him from riding,īut the Western cowboy lifestyle caught his attention. He spent a lot of time in the woods surrounding his home, always feeling a pull to be out on the land. Growing up in Ohio, Knowles wasn’t aware of his family’s storied Texas past until he was 11 years old. Yet Knowles’ goal is eerily like his forefathers, the Farwell brothers - he wants to create a sustainable ranching business benefit- ting not only his family but others. ![]() Today, the XIT Ranch runs different cattle than what was pictured in black and white photos, and the Quarter Horses that once only worked the ranch now also make waves in the performance arena. Knowles took the leap to pursue his dream of pre- serving his family’s heritage and has found it more than worth the risk. What that means today is to continue the legacy and to continue to share the traditions.”įor a kid raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, to shift from money management to ranch management is a big leap of faith. ![]() “I view myself as a steward, and my job is to do the best I can while it’s my turn. “I always had a big passion for the outdoors, and my mother always says that I wasn’t meant to live in Ohio,” says Knowles, 41 years old. For Knowles, it’s the future that he wants to focus on. If you want to read about the ranch’s history, there are more books on the XIT Ranch than can fill a library shelf. Ican Wagyu, not the Longhorn and Here- ford cattle of the ranch’s past.Īnd, instead of encompassing 10 coun- ties in Texas, or “X-I-T,” (Roman numeral “X” for 10, “I” for in, “T” for Texas) as legend holds, the once largest ranch un- der fence is now compiled of land hold- ings in La Veta, Colorado, and as of June 2022, near Channing, Texas, where to- day’s XIT will once again have its head- quarters, located in the original ranch’s Rita Blanca division. But this time, the ranch is stocked with grass-fed Angus and American Out of the pages of history, the XIT is rejoining the ranching industry, led by Knowles, John Farwell’s three times great-grandson. The family continued to lease its holdings un- til 1963 when they sold the last parcel. From Chicago, Illinois, John and Charles Farwell put together the exchange, then ran the XIT Ranch from 1885 to 1912. The original XIT Ranch was a result of one of the largest land swaps in history, when the Farwell brothers took 3 million acres of land in exchange for building a new Texas state capitol building in Austin. He’s making that happen in a way that builds forward-thinking cattle and horse programs. ![]() Drew Knowles had a dream to ranch and a vision to restore his family’s heritage, the famed XIT Ranch. Now split be- tween two headquarters - cattle in Texas and horses in Colorado - Drew Knowles is working to re-build and rebrand his family’s historic XIT Ranch for the modern age. Looking south over the XIT Ranch horse headquarters in Colorado, the Sangre De Cristo Mountains reach into the blue sky, not the sweeping West Texas plains you might expect from the historic ranch’s history. THE XIT RANCH SEEMS LIKE A LONG-LOST LEGEND, BUT UNDER FAMILY MEMBER DREW KNOWLES’ VISION, THE HISTORIC TEXAS RANCH IS MAKING A COMEBACK.
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