August 24, 1882 — Texas Panhandle.
Sixteen cowboys.
One hundred twenty-five horses.
And the largest cattle drive ever recorded.
The trail was short—just 35 miles from Tulia to Canyon. But the scale? Unbelievable.
10,652 cattle.
That’s not a mistake.
That day, the cowboys of the T Anchor Ranch pushed over ten thousand longhorns through a single fenceline gate at Big Lake.
It took them half a day just to get the entire herd through.
When the cattle finally settled down that night, they stretched so wide across the plains that it took a cowboy on horseback more than an hour to circle them at a fast trot.
No drones. No radios.
Just grit, whistles, and the thunder of hooves under a vast Texas sky.
More than 140 years later, that record still stands.
A forgotten day in history—still unbeaten.