The Texas Star: No.2 1980.

See: http://www.karankawa.com/his.htm
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fpi08
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/utcah/00360/cah-00360.html

Texaco oil and gas wells have been part of home on the range for 
the deer (left) at the 32,000-acre Pierce ranch in southeast Texas 
since 1934, the year Texaco signed its first lease here.

Texaco today is producing more than 3,600 barrels of oil and over 
20 million cubic feet of gas a day from the ranch's 160 active wells. 
The deer are doing well, too. At last count there were 3,800. 
Pheasants, turkey, coyote, bobcats, and wolves also make this 
range their habitat. Texaco is careful not to disturb the natural 
balance of things.

"We follow the Company's usual good housekeeping practices," 
Field Foreman J. C. Franz says. "Our equipment is well 
maintained and our roads are kept in good shape. We keep the 
underbrush on our leases cut and put in ditches for good 
drainage. We make sure the land always looks the same as it
 did before we drilled on it."

Besides the oil and gas wells and a substantial herd of cattle, 
15,000 acres of the ranch are planted with rice.

The Pierce ranch was founded in the 1800's by Abel H. 
"Shanghai" Pierce who is described on a monument near his 
ranch house as "a penniless cowboy who rose through energy 
and shrewdness to the rank of cattle king." He was born in 
Rhode Island in 1834 and at the age of 19, stowed away on a ship
 bound from New York to Texas. He got a job busting broncs and 
took his first year's pay of $200 in cattle. After service in the 
Confederate Army, he built his herd by rounding up and 
branding wild Texas longhorns that roamed across the prairies. 
At six-foot-three, he was an impressive figure. who was highly 
regarded as a cattle expert.

There are a number of stories about how he came by his nickname. 
The most dramatic is that he was "shanghaied" off the docks. The 
most reasonable is based on a pair of spurs he had made. They 
were unusually large and when he put them on he is said to have
 commented that they made him look like a shanghai rooster. 
While no one really knows which is true. these and other stories 
gave him the quality of seeming larger than life.

Today the ranch is owned by his heirs. As in Shanghai's time, it 
is still a cattle ranch where the herds are worked by real cowboys. 
And it is a valuable oil and gas field, under production by Texaco 
for more than 45 years in total harmony with nature.