Tad Richards never met a stranger he didn't invite to ranch

The U.S. Cavalry from Fort Chadbourne near present-day Bronte and Fort Concho at San Angelo had driven most of the Apaches and Comanche from the open range surrounding Oak Creek by Sept. 2, 1879, when Tad Richards was born. The Richards Ranch was about three miles east of Oak Creek in Runnels County and north of Bronte. Although Runnels County was created from Bexar and Travis counties in 1858, it was not organized until 1880. Tad Richards' father helped organize Coke County in 1889. Young Tad attended school at Fort Chadbourne and Hayrick, a community in southeastern Coke County that was named for a nearby mountain shaped like a hay mound. When he was 14 years old, Tad took his first job herding cattle near the Nueces and Frio rivers in South Texas for $20 per month. "That was good money in those days," he told a Standard-Times reporter some years later. "I was staying at Hayrick, going to school, when a man came along and offered me $20 a month if I'd furnish my horse. That ended school for me. It was two weeks before my family found out about it, and by that time I was well into my job."...more