Capitol Syndicate Deal

The Texas Capitol was paid for in land, not cash. The Constitution of 1876 set aside three million acres of the Panhandle to fund a new statehouse. The contract went to Mathias Schnell of Rock Island, Illinois, who handed it to the Chicago firm of Taylor, Babcock and Company, whose partners Abner Taylor, Amos C. Babcock and the brothers Charles B. and John V. Farwell became known as the Capitol Syndicate. They built the red granite Capitol between 1882 and 1888 and took the Panhandle land as their pay. The building cost $3,744,630.60, of which the state itself assumed about $500,000. The land became the XIT Ranch, about 220 miles from north to south along the New Mexico line, covering parts or all of ten counties from Dallam to Hockley.

To stock it, John V. Farwell formed the Capitol Freehold Land and Investment Company in London in late 1884 and raised about $5 million from British investors, among them the Earl of Aberdeen. The first herd, 2,500 head, arrived on July 1, 1885. Within a year 781 miles of range were fenced, and by about 1900 some 1,500 miles of fence split the ranch into 94 pastures. After 1887 the herd averaged about 150,000 cattle.

The Handbook of Texas says the XIT ran largely without profit for most of its life. Land sales began in the late 1890s, the last XIT cattle were sold on November 1, 1912, and the last parcel went in 1963. A century after the trade, the land exchanged for the Capitol carried a tax valuation of almost $7 billion.