The Jeff Dykes Range Livestock collection encompasses topics as cowboys, livestock, range management, brand books, predators, barbed wire, and range literature from Louis L’Amour and Zane Gray to Larry McMurtry and Elmer Kelton. The approximately 20-30,000 books and cover a variety of languages and regions, and any type of material on range livestock.
The livestock collection is especially important as Dykes literally defined and established the field, first as a collector and later as a dealer. A significant though sometimes overlooked part of the Dykes material contains the records of his rare book business, including correspondence, research notes, and a complete run of the catalogs he produced. The capstone of the Dykes collection came in 1976, as part of the university’s centennial celebration and as the library’s celebratory one millionth volume, Prose and Poetry of the Livestock Industry (1905).
The Dykes Collection consists of books, serials, art (paintings, sculptures, prints and illustrations), realia, correspondence and the records of Dykes’s rare book business and those of ranches in northern Mexico Texas. Material is collected in all languages and in multiple translations of the same title. Scholarly, trade, and popular titles are collected
As indicated above, collection is strong in documenting the livestock industry and its practices throughout the Americas, the portrayal of the cowboy/vaquero, and the American West. In particular, are Dykes’s research notes papers as a historian of the Old West and records of rare book business. Notable are the records of the Mariposa Ranch, letters of Charles Goodnight, and the extensive holdings on western illustrators and authors.
Current efforts are related to filling gaps in the serials within the collection and purchases of maps related to trade routes, cattle drives, etc.
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Chapman Texas & Borderlands, University Archives, Colonial Mexican, Kelsey Americana, Kelsey Illustrator.
Curators: Anton duPlessis and Sierra Laddusaw
Created 7/24/2020
Mailing Address:
Cushing Memorial Library & Archives
TAMU 5000
College Station, TX 77843-5000
Physical Address:
400 Spence St.
Main Campus near the Central Campus Garage
Phone:
979-845-1951