“Webster’s Dictionary II” defines a “renaissance man” as a man with varied interests and expertise in several areas. Ninety-one-year-old Joe Shelton of Mobeetie fits that description. He’s a perfect depiction of a typical Texas Panhandle cowboy while maintaining a wide array of pursuits and knowledge from growing up poor; ranching jobs as a teen; riding in the saddle all day working cattle; checking windmills; milking blotted udders of mother-cows; doctoring sick or injured stock; branding and de-horning; breaking colts; watching for bad weather; “rodeoing”; riding fences; hauling water; doing chuck-wagon duty; worrying about the land changing owners; and witnessing the cattle industry evolving over 70 years.
Joe says he was very blessed to have lived a good life with so many happy experiences. Along with his riding and roping skills, Joe can add pilot, flight instructor, fishing and vacation charter entrepreneur, game warden, scuba-diving rescue, oil field worker, hunter, amateur-archeologist, beaver trapper, and busy father and grandfather.
A vintage photo of Joe and his father on horseback is one of his most treasured possessions. Joe was delivered on the family farm by his grandfather, Priority Shelton, a doctor who practiced across the Canadian River area from Tascosa to Miami. The Shelton place was 11 miles north of Miami and 11 miles south of Mobeetie. His grandfather’s office equipment is proudly displayed at the Roberts County Museum in Miami and is recorded along with other persons of interests at the Old Mobeetie Jail Museum in Mobeetie.
Joe’s parents, Henry and Beulah Shelton, raised eight children on a half section of prairie in Hemphill County. His family survived by running a few cattle, and having milk cows, pigs, chickens, and a garden for food. Rolling dust storms were prevalent in the Panhandle during dry seasons and many occasions found the family, with faces covered, escaping the windstorms in a small earthen cellar. Joe remembers that their house was only airtight during the winter when water froze in the cracks of the cinder block house whereby the rooms were warm.
Joe attended school in Mobeetie and became a real cowboy after graduation when he and a friend hired on at the Hayhook Ranch and the Morrison Brothers Ranch. Ranches during this era were vast. The Hayhook was 55 sections with 3,000 head of cattle. Pay was $85 a month. In 1951, that was a lot of money for a cowboy with Levi jeans only costing $1 or a nice shirt for $2. Tobacco products were 50 cents. However, the young “whippersnappers” decided they needed a raise and were promptly fired when they asked for $100 a month.
In 1953, Joe was drafted into the Army just as the Korean War was winding down. He did not see action but was greatly praised for driving a truckload of milk to the front line. Joe said that the soldiers had plenty of Korean beer to drink, but fresh milk, even canned, was a luxury!
Joe returned home in the mid-1950s and was excited to find work as a cowboy. He was told that he was being hired because of a relative. The boss told him, “If you are even half as good as your uncle, you will be a good cowboy!” Joe was eager to be the best cowboy ever.
Cowboy life began before dawn. Horses were fed, watered, and inspected. Feed was loaded onto wagons to be hauled to the creek areas were the cattle gathered. Joe was the lone cowboy at his bunkhouse as the other cowboys had shacks down on the river. Nearby Mobeetie was a bustling community in the 1950s and going to town on Saturdays was a special time.
Joe proudly tells that he met his wife Nancy sitting up in a mulberry treeing eating mulberries.
Nancy Sharp was a true cowgirl. Her family’s home, the Carwile Ranch, was east of Mobeetie, but she attended school in Pampa 30 miles to the west. Nancy loved riding horses, so one day Joe rode to Pampa to see her and then she rode back to Mobeetie with him. It was an 18-hour ride. Joe and Nancy eloped to Tucumcari, New Mexico, in 1957; they bought the Carwile Ranch in 1959 and worked their cattle together. They supplemented their ranch income by contracting with oil seismographic crews in the 1960s. However, no oil was discovered on their ranch. Joe said the dinosaurs must have avoided their property.
After 17 years, the marriage ended in divorce, but Joe and Nancy continued to ranch together. It was during this period that Joe took a plane ride and was hooked. He bought a plane, built a hanger, and became a licensed pilot and instructor. On a whim, he flew to Mexico and became familiar with ranchers around Chihuahua. He formed a charter service to Mexico for fishermen, vacationers, and even honeymooners. On one trip, he made his way to visit Indian villages near Mexico’s Cooper Canyon.
Wanting to pursue experience in law enforcement, Joe became a game warden. During hunting season, he often worked with ranchers scouting for poachers. He was assigned to the newly built Lake Meredith and was later selected to become a diver for water rescues. Over his career at the lake, he recovered the bodies of 27 drowning victims.
Our “man for all seasons” still resides on the Carwile Ranch home-place. After Nancy’s death in 2012, the ranch was divided between her heirs. Joe runs about 42 head of cattle that he checks on daily. He still rides horses and has a favorite saddle but most days he takes the 4-wheeler for his tour of the ranch.
The last Carwile Ranch branding was held in 2010. As typical with branding events, the actual “branding” of new cattle only took one day, but two additional days were delegated for family and friends to gather and embrace their heritage. Joe and Nancy were proud of their legacy of three daughters, Sally, Cindy, and Teresa, along with five grandkids, twelve great-grandkids and five great-great-grandkids. The ranch under Joe and Nancy’s watch covered 50 years of love for the land and devotion to their community.
Joe’s expertise in hunting and trapping over the years supplemented his income. Recently, he came to my aid, helping to capture fifteen skunks from under my house. County officials depend on Joe’s trapping skills to remove beavers that can be found in highway stream crossings. The busy beavers go below the highway to build their dams in the culverts along the creeks.
Joe and I also share a deep appreciation for the history of Mobeetie. In September and October of 2024, we participated in commemorative events held at battle sites from the Red River Wars of 1877. Sesquicentennial events were part of a regional survey of the 1874-1877 military actions across the Texas Panhandle, including Joe’s ranch where the Battle of Sweetwater Creek occurred. Sweetwater Creek passes through the property and Texas Historical Commission researchers have combed the ranch to find artifacts that traced a 10-mile-long battle sequence between Native American tribesmen and the United States Military. Other military battle sites from the wars with the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache included nearby Adobe Walls and Buffalo Wallow. Visitors were allowed to visit the site on this occasion in 2024. Joe hopes to get his metal detector operational and look for more artifacts.
Joe’s life has had many pathways but being a cowboy was his heart. He tells of warning a “cowboy want-to-be” not to drink river water in some places. He knew where quicksand was prevalent to trap cattle along the Canadian River. He remarked that these days, horses are hauled in fancy trucks and trailers out to areas to work the cattle. Riding from sunrise to sunset is a thing of the past. Joe proudly boasts of having experienced the wide Canadian River (one-fourth to three quarters of a mile wide) before the river was controlled with the dam at Lake Meredith; he believes the Panhandle is in danger of not having sufficient water.
Joe Shelton is quick to say keep your children busy and have a pet like he did. Except that having a rooster named “Roosty” as a pal was not always appreciated by his family, especially since Roosty did not like women and picked fights with them. Roosty could be found sitting on Joe’s chest when he took a nap or taking a seat on the saddle of Joe’s horse as they went for a ride. But there again, we are exploring the lifeways of a very interesting and unique individual.
God speed Mr. Joe Shelton, the Texas Panhandle’s renaissance cowboy!
