Old Cattle Car -- Bud Matthews Switch, TX
N 32° 44.167 W 099° 31.055
14S E 451505 N 3622151
An old cattle car is lovingly preserved at a small historical display at Bud Matthews Switch in rural Shackelford County TX.
Waymark Code: WMJE8M
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 11/07/2013
Views: 7
Bud Matthews Switch is a nice little historical area to stop into during a long monotonous drive in the plains of West Texas.
Geeks of all kinds (history geeks, train geeks, and big cool machine geeks especially) have something to see here. Bug geeks can try and catch a rainbow-hued Painted Grasshopper in the right season. Spider geeks can enjoy the tarantulas that migrate here in the spring, or examine the beauty of the giant HARMLESS NON-AGGRESSIVE BENEFICIAL Argiriope Aurantia spiders WHO DO NOT BITE PEOPLE that make their homes between the fence rails in the summer and fall.
The Butterfield Overland Mail passenger and mail service stagecoaches passed through here starting in the late 1850s until operations ceased at the beginning of the Civil War. The route of the Texas Central railroad followed much of the old Butterfield trail route.
For more on the Butterfield Overland Mail, see here: (
visit link)
A railroad switch was installed here at Bud Matthews Ranch on the Texas Central railroad in 1900 to load cattle from many local ranches. Next to follow the old mail route is the US 180, which survives today as a major arterial connecting towns throughout west Texas.
The cattle rail-shipping point at Bud Matthews Switch operated until 1967. Today, cattle are still loaded here at the historic cattle chute at Bud Matthews, but they are loaded onto trucks, not train cars.
A historic marker preserves the history of this important cattle-shipping point:
BUD MATTHEWS SWITCH on the TEXAS CENTRAL RAILROAD
In 1900 the Texas Central Railway extended a line northwest from Albany across this portion of Rose Ella (Matthews) Conrad's cattle ranch. Ella and her brother John A. "Bud" Matthews, for whom this site is named, promptly constructed cattle pens and a loading chute at this location. Surrounding ranchers soon were shipping their cattle from this switch to markets in Fort Worth. As many as 105,000 head of cattle were shipped annually until the railroad ceased operations in 1967. Since that year local ranchers have continued to load cattle onto trucks from this site. (1992)"