The Real Story Behind the Four Sixes

Ask around about the Four Sixes and somebody will tell you about a card game. Burk Burnett, the story goes, won the ranch with a hand of four sixes.

It's a good story. The Handbook of Texas says it doesn't hold up.

Samuel Burk Burnett was born on January 1, 1849, in Bates County, Missouri. In the late 1850s, his family moved to Texas and built a home on Denton Creek in Denton County.

He learned the cattle business early. His first trail drive was in 1866, when he was 17. The next year, he was trail boss, driving his father's 1,200 cattle up the Chisholm Trail to Abilene, Kansas. In 1868, he became his father's partner.

In 1871, Burnett got his own brand. According to the Handbook of Texas, he bought 100 head of cattle from Frank Crowley in Denton County. Those cattle already carried a brand: four sixes.

Burnett kept it.

In 1874, Burnett moved cattle north to the Wichita River country, near present-day Wichita Falls, where he later set up his ranch headquarters.

He became friends with Quanah Parker, the Comanche leader. Burnett leased 300,000 acres of Kiowa and Comanche land in Indian Territory for 6½ cents an acre and grazed 10,000 cattle there until 1902.

He kept growing. Over several years he bought the Old Eight Ranch near Guthrie in King County, about 140,000 acres and 1,500 head of stock. The deal was finished in 1900, and Burnett moved the Four Sixes headquarters to King County. Around the same time, he bought 107,520 acres in the Panhandle northeast of Amarillo.

In 1921, oil was discovered on land near the town of Burkburnett, and his fortune grew fast. He died on June 27, 1922, with an estimated worth of $6 million.

The Four Sixes passed to his granddaughter, Anne Burnett Tandy, and stayed with his family. The ranch became known for champion Quarter Horses as well as cattle.

The ranch's owner, Anne Marion, died at 81 on February 11, 2020. Her will called for all of her ranching operations to be sold. In January 2022, the ranch holdings, listed at $341 million and covering more than 266,000 acres in West Texas, sold to a group led by screenwriter and producer Taylor Sheridan.

The poker story will probably never die. It's too good to.

But the real one belongs to a 22-year-old cattleman who bought 100 head of branded cattle in Denton County and decided the brand was worth keeping. More than 150 years later, the ranch still carries the name.

Read what's at stake when a family ranch changes hands: What's at Stake When Ranches Change Hands