Back in the cowboy years, in Texas’s Crosby County, there was a particular mesa (known then simply as “the holding point on the North Blanco) that was popular for holding cattle because it was surrounded on two sides by a drop off down to a river fork, which acted as a natural fence. It was wide and grassy so the cattle could have a graze and rest there for the night, and the cowboys who were tending them only had to stand guard at the entrance side of the mesa.
In the late 1880s, there was a trail boss - often named Sawyer though there’s no evidence that that was his real name - driving about 1500 head of cattle northwards with his men, who planned to stay the night at this holding point as he had many times before. Only this time, there was some sort of conflict with a homesteader (or “nester”) who had taken up residence on the mesa. In some versions, the nester’s cows got mixed up with Sawyer’s herd, and the nester got enraged when an exhausted Sawyer insisted they’d deal with separating out the herds in the morning. In other versions, the homestead was blocking Sawyer from using the mesa, or the nester tried to charge him to use it and he refused.
In most tellings, it was the angry nester who started the stampede - making noise and waving his arms in the middle of the night to send the bulk of the herd and several mounted cowhands over the edge of the mesa to their deaths. Sometimes there was a thunderstorm helping whip them up into a frenzy. One more charitable interpretation claims that the nester was only trying to separate out his own cows and set them off by accident - a foolish and impatient thing to do in the middle of the night, but not necessarily malicious.
In one notable version, it was Sawyer himself, enraged by finding the homestead in his way, who sent his own cattle straight through the house and everyone living in it. (The part of me that appreciates the drama of a good cowboy gone mad prefers this version, but financially speaking, it seems a little less likely than the others.)
Either way, on this point all the stories agree: morning came and the majority of the herd lie lifeless on the banks of the river below. In the nester versions of the story, he was caught by Sawyer and his remaining hands, tied to his own blindfolded donkey, and sent over the cliff himself. Sawyer and the remaining cowpokes and cattle continued their journey north and many say Sawyer never worked again.
In the ensuing years, other cattle drivers found that they could no longer use the popular holding point: herds would tend to stampede towards that same cliff in the middle of the night, often with the same tragic ends. Sometimes there was no apparent stimulus, but others claimed to see ghosts - misty white cows and cowboys running in the sky or drifting across the mesa over the edge, followed shortly by the flesh-and-blood herd. Others claim they’ve seen the nester, flapping his rain slicker to rile up the cows or riding blindfolded over the cliff himself. The mesa (now called Stampede Mesa) was soon regarded as one of the most haunted places in Texas and only the most reckless trail bosses would try to stop there.
A man named Lon Schuyler gave a first-hand account, recounted by CF Eckhardt in Texas Escapes, about a cattle drive he worked in 1902:
"Spring of aught-two, it was. Me an' a pal a mine, feller named George Ramp, I think that was his last name, we signed on for a Injun-beef drive goin' plumb to Montana. Got up on the North Blanco, the boss says 'We a-gonna hold on the point.'
"Let me tell you, 'bout half the crew drew their time right then. Me an' George, though, we was fulla piss an' vinegar, an' wasn't no spook story gonna scare us. Them ol' hands, they told us we was crazy if we stayed, but we done it anyway.
"Me an' George, we drew second watch-that's from 'bout ten in the evenin' to 'bout two in the mornin'. We decided we'd ride double circle-one of us goin' round the herd one way, one goin' the other, so we'd cross twice durin' each round an' if we seen anything peculiar we could warn each other.
"It was right on toward midnight, by the way the dipper was settin'. I was on the east side. That's when them things started comin' outa the brush. Looked like cows, but not like no cows I ever saw. They was plumb white-white as milk. They didn't make no sound atall. An' then didn't look like they walked. They just sorta floated by.
"Now, I was ridin' a claybank gelding, one of the steadiest horses I ever had. Never knew that horse to shy at anything afore, but he sure didn't want nothin' to do with them things. Trouble was, we couldn't get 'way from 'em. They was everywhere. I hit at one with my hand an' it just went in. Felt like hittin' into cold smoke, 's what it felt like.
"I hollered real loud 'Look out, George, they gonna run!' an' sure 'nough, they did. George, he was on the west side, an' he taken his lariat an' commenced to hittin' the leaders on their noses, tryin' to turn 'em. Don't never let nobody tell you you can turn a herd by shootin' in front of 'em. All that does is scare 'em worse an' make 'em run faster.
"Well, the fellers that wasn't out there with me an' George, all they had to do was pull their boots on an' grab saddled horses. While we did lose 'bout two hunderd head we managed to turn 'em into a mill an' keep the rest from goin' over the side.
"That trailboss, he come up to me a-hollerin'. 'Goddammit, Lon,' he says, 'it was your holler started that run! I oughta pull you off that horse an' stomp your head in.'
"Now, George, he wasn't a cussin' sorta feller. Oh, he'd say 'Hell' or 'damn' ever' now an' then, but he wasn't a big cusser. He laid into that trailboss, an' I swear he called him ever'thing but a white man. When he got through he told that feller 'If Lon hadn't hollered when he did, I'd be down there with them cows. We was up here, you wasn't. That wasn't no low-flyin' nighthawk or a rabbit or a possum loose in the herd. We seen them things. They was ghosts-cow ghosts. An' we're a-drawin' our time right now, 'cause neither one of us is damnfool 'nough to keep workin' for a damnfool like you. An' we're gonna tell ever'body we run into, all the way back to Lampasas County, just what kinda damnfool you are, holdin' a herd on Stampede Mesa.' We done it, too, an' that feller never bossed another herd."
As late as the middle of the 20th century, people reported finding cattle bones on the shores of the Blanco river, at the foot of the mesa. In 1948, songwriter Stan Jones wrote “Ghost Riders in the Sky” (set to an old Irish tune, “Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye”) about the legend of Stampede Mesa, firmly establishing it into Western lore, even if most people who hear the song don’t know the story behind it. The song has been recorded by more than 50 artists, most popularly by Johnny Cash, though personally I like this version:
I’ve had a fondness for the western ghost rider imagery ever since doing some deep dives into Wild Hunt lore and its manifestations in different cultures… but that’s a post for another day.
As best as I can figure out, Stampede Mesa is located right about here. The rivers have been dammed and/or dried up over the years, and the mesa is on private property, though there’s a dusty little marina on the opposite side of the reservoir that might give you a peek. The bones of hundreds of cattle - and a handful of cowboys - presumably still lie buried below the lakebed.
Sources:
The Haunting Legend of ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’ is Based on a True Story
The Memoirs of Crosby County: Stampede Mesa