THE LEGENDARY FOUR SIXES

The ranch was founded 155 years ago by men and women who are as mythical as they are real.

- JOHNNY D. BOGGS

Ranching has always been something of a gamble, so it makes sense that Captain Samuel "Burk" Burnett won one of Texas's famous ranches in a poker game. Of course, when you're holding four sixes, that's a pretty safe bet.

Makes sense, sure. It just didn't happen that way.

"The poker hand story is a good one," says Henry Chappell, author of 6666: Portrait of a Texas Ranch, "but like so many great stories, it isn't true.

The truth isn't quite as exciting. When Burnett bought 100 head at Denton Creek in 1868, the cattle already wore the 6666 brand. The bill of sale transferred the cattle and the brand to Burnett.

But the ranch (roughly 266,255 acres today with headquarters in Guthrie) and Burnett have remarkable stories and the 6666 keeps making history.

In December 2020, the 6666, aka The Sixes, went up for sale with a $320 million price tag. Last year, filmmaker and native Texan Taylor Sheridan-whose ranching expertise comes primarily as creator of Yellowstone and its Paramount Network spinoff-sheadlined an investment group that bought that ranch. Though the sales price was not disclosed, the Fort Worth-Star Telegram reported it at $192.2 million. Asked about the price, Sam Middleton, owner of Chas. S. Middleton and Son LLC, which represented the 6666 in the real-estate deal, says with a laugh: "Can't tell you."

The 6666 has 119 pastures, 18 solar wells, 29 windmills, a top-line quarter-horse program and all those cattle (Angus, these days), spread out among three divisions that include the Guthrie headquarters and the Dixon Creek Ranch near Panhandle, Texas.

"This was a turnkey operation that included half of the minerals, all of the cows, all of the horses...all of the ranch equipment, the rolling stock, the tractors, the trucks, trailers, the furniture in the big house, the art, Middleton says.

There was another key to the sale, though.