09/07/2026
Dolph Briscoe Jr. never moved away from the town he was born in, and by the end of his life he was reckoned one of the largest individual landowners in the country.
He was born in Uvalde on the twenty third of April, 1923, and South Texas is where he stayed. He built a cattle and ranching operation centered on Uvalde and on the Catarina country down in Dimmit County, and he ran it from the same headquarters for his whole adult life. This was not a man who made his money somewhere else and bought a ranch to hang his hat on. He was a cattleman, born into that brush and working in it.
He did serve a term as governor of Texas, from 1973 to 1979, and when it was over he went home to the cattle.
By the time he died, on the twenty seventh of June, 2010, that standing was widely reported in Texas and across the whole United States. A holding of that size, put together quietly by a hometown boy who never really moved away from home. His family's holdings still turn up near the top of the lists of the biggest landowners in the state.
The University of Texas named its center for American history after him and keeps his papers there. But the real record of Dolph Briscoe is not sitting on a shelf in Austin. It is the country itself, brush and cattle and caliche road, running south out of Uvalde, and his family holds it yet.
