John S. Bilby (January 10, 1832 – November 26, 1919) was the founder of the Bilby Ranch, which claimed to be the second largest ranch in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The ranch headquartered in Quitman, Missouri, had holdings throughout the U.S. Southwest. Bilby settled in

Nodaway County Nodaway County is a county located in the northwest part of Missouri. As of the 2010 census, the population was 23,370. Its county seat is Maryville. The county was organized February 14, 1845 and is named for the Nodaway River. It is the larg ...

, Missouri, in 1868 and began expanding his empire using one property as

collateral Collateral may refer to: Business and finance * Collateral (finance), a borrower's pledge of specific property to a lender, to secure repayment of a loan * Marketing collateral, in marketing and sales Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Collate ...

for the next. Soon it stretched from Missouri to

Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...

to Texas to New Mexico. A dispute over the cattle operations was addressed by the United States Supreme Court in 1887 in the case of ''Teal v. Bilby''. At its peak the ranch was reported to be 200,000 acres. However, since the ranch was based on borrowed funds it collapsed in 1936, and Bilby was left with the only unmortgaged property—the home in Quitman. He died after being hit by a train shortly after the collapse of the ranch. Portions of the ranch became the

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in Texas and joined King Ranch, which is the largest ranch in the United States as of February 2024. In 1987, the State of Missouri acquired of the land around Quitman to form the Bilby Ranch Lake Conservation Area.

References

External links

Missouri Conservationist Bilby profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bilby, John 1832 births 1919 deaths People from Nodaway County, Missouri Ranchers from Missouri Railway accident deaths in the United States