Maddux ranch homesteaded by family matriarch 135 years ago

The Maddux family beginnings in Chase County is as much a western tale as any could be.
The Maddux family home will be 136 years old in October.
Ezra “Taylor” Maddux came from Dennison, Iowa and homesteaded about 11 miles north of Wauneta on the Stinking Water Creek in 1886.
His wife, Clara, and children, Earl, 3, and Daisy, 2, came later on the train and stayed several weeks in Culbertson while their small sod house was being built on the east divide near Wauneta.
As a matter of interest, among their belongings was an Oxalis plant, also known as a shamrock or sorrel plant.
This plant is still blooming in several descendants’ homes today, said Carol Maddux.
After a short time, the family moved from the divide to the valley below.
Around 1889, Taylor purchased a livery stable in McCook.
Clara and the children remained in Chase County to “prove up” the homestead.
“Great-grandmom was the matriarch who homesteaded the farm,” said John Maddux, fourth generation rancher of the current Maddux Cattle Company.
Taylor would ride the 40 to 50 miles cross-country from McCook on his horse “Sank” to see his family when he could, John said.
Clara raised Angus cattle which she grazed mostly on rangeland. She also grew corn which she partly fed to their small herd of cattle, but, she mostly burned corn for heat the first year, Carol said.
“Years after, Clara regretted burning the corn as it would have been good for feeding cattle as their herd grew,” she said.
Eventually, they planted wheat to feed the cattle and now wheat and rye are grown for cattle to feed on, Carol said.
“Our farming enterprise’s purpose is, and always has been,  to raise and feed cattle,” she added.
In 1891, once the family had fulfilled their homesteading obligation, Clara and the children moved to McCook while the homestead sat vacant.
Around 1898, Taylor sold the livery stable in McCook and the whole family returned to the homestead in Chase County.
By this time two more children had joined the family, Helen in 1893 and Glen in 1895.
The family was complete with the arrival of Wilfred in 1899 and Cecil in 1905.
It was extremely dry during the late 1800s.
Being a homesteader was harder than people can fathom, according to historians. They faced drought, heat, blizzards, wind and winters fiercer than many had faced before.
“Only about 55% of Nebraska homesteaders made it. The rest got sick, went broke or left. The people who stayed faced an incredible array of enemies—they were leathery and obstinate,” said Rick Edwards, retired director of the University of Nebraska Lincoln’s Center for Great Plains Studies and his team of researchers.
“They were among the first residents of this new state called Nebraska,” he added.
Some homesteaders would sell off small sections of land to get by, said John, and that was how the family gradually increased the size of its ranchland.
“A story passed down through the Maddux family told that Taylor once traded a horse, saddle and a pair of spurs for a parcel of land,” John said.
By purchasing small parcels of land from other homesteaders, they expanded their property—moving closer to Spring Creek northeast of Imperial.
Tale of a tree
One branch of the historic Texas Trail led by where the original “soddie” was built.
Just north of that on the trail was a lone cottonwood tree.
In a book by Nellie Snyder Yost called ‘The Call of the Range,” which was a collection of historical accounts in Nebraska, the Maddux ranch history was included.
In it was said, “Some enterprising citizen put up a shack on the north side of the big tree and stocked it well with only one commodity. There at the stream and shack, during the lusty trail days, cowboys and cattle had their last drinks of whiskey and water, respectively, as they ‘hove to’ in  Ogallala,” Yost wrote.
For years pieces of glass would work up when they farmed around the tree, Carol said.
For an additional bit of history, the Texas cattle business boomed at Ogallala in 1876.
The increase in demand caused 75,000 to 125,000 cattle to be driven to Ogallala each year until 1884.
Sometime in the mid 1900s, a Maddux descendent named Eva insisted the tree must remain because of its significance, so irrigation on the land had to go around the tree.
This continued until a twister took down the tree in the 1960s, Carol said.
The Maddux ranch still has cattle drives as a matter of good business.
The company conducts multiple drives of hundreds of head of cattle during the year with the last one usually being the biggest, John said.
Ways to a means
In 1916, the family was buying corn from neighbors to help feed the cattle.
They used a wagon and team of mules named Gin and De to feed the cows.
They built their first barn that same year to store hay, horses and mules.
Three of Clara and Taylor’s sons, Cecil, Glen and Wilfred, stayed and ranched in Chase County the rest of their lives, Carol said.
“In 1917, my granddad Glen and great uncle Wilfred Maddux formed a successful partnership by building a feedlot to feed cattle up to slaughter weight,” said John.
The feedlot remained in business until 2009.
“The family still has the feedlot, but it is only used in the family operation now,” said Carol.
Cecil eventually bought his own place which is now managed by his grandson, Mike, also a fourth generation Maddux.
Moving forward, the family was able to save some money which prepared them to ride out a drought and the Great Depression going into the 1930s. This afforded them the opportunity to expand their ranchland ownership even further.
Another interesting story during the 1940s was about a horse barn on the property which housed the feed wagon horses and the hired man who took care of them.
“The hired man trained the horses to go to the bathroom outside so he wouldn’t have to clean it up,” Carol laughed.
The horse barn is still in use, only updated. It still houses horses and a tack room.
The old barn built in 1916 is still standing only it isn’t recognizable anymore.
“In 1973 when the old barn was no longer needed for horses, mules and hay, it was jacked up, the sides removed, lowered back to the ground and covered with metal,” Carol said.
Driving by today it looks like a Quonset and is used as a shop, she added.
The ranch is now a cow-calf and yearling operation managed by John Maddux.