A deadly skirmish occurred in the 1870s between area ranchmen and the Comanche on the Lacy Creek on the present day Campstool Ranch.

The Comanches, led by the Quahada chief named Black Horse, left Fort Sill, Oklahoma, on May 29 with a group of 19 braves in a search for buffalo, and by June 29, they had yet to find any buffalo, so they killed a horse on the "U" Ranch, near the headwaters of the Concho River in Howard County, and an ensuing battle with the Texas Rangers soon followed.

--Doyle Phillips) [5] Although the county was part of the 1842 Fisher–Miller Land Grant, no resulting settlement happened in the area.

Settlers began arriving after the American Civil War, after the demise of the buffalo herds and the departure of Indian tribes.

[8] According to legend, Frank and Jesse James hid out on Sterling Creek in the 1870s to raise horses and hunt buffalo.

As a result, the large cattle ranches, often having the earliest presence in the area, initially consisted only of the odd-numbered sections within each block until adjoining acreage was acquired from the State of Texas, such as those lands sold by the Common School Fund.

The checkered pattern of land ownership did not create many problems during the time of the open range, as the large cattle outfits “controlled” vast amounts of open rangeland for grazing and could move cattle from pasture to pasture without having to compensate any other land owner or even the State.

Large cattle drives to Colorado City and Fort Worth routinely occurred between 1875 and the mid-1880s, at a time the region was still open rangeland.

Slaughter drove 89 carloads of cattle, mostly overland, to rangeland in Orin Junction, Wyoming that was controlled by the Driskill brothers, who also owned a hotel in Austin, Texas.

R. Billie, knowing the owners, the Snyder brothers, cut the perimeter fence and drove over 1,000 head of cattle southward into the main horse pasture of the Renderbrook Spade Ranch while the McEntire crew weathered the storm at ranch headquarters over several days.

With minimal losses after the blizzard, the McEntire crew continued the drive towards Colorado City and the feedlots in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

In Arkansas, he married Eudora Fowler and subsequently moved to Dallas to work at American National Bank, which his father, W.R. McEntire, founded and controlled with C.C.

McEntire's younger brother, George, also followed the same path, learning finance at American National Bank in Dallas prior to returning to Sterling County and subsequently either assuming ownership or control of the ranch.

Between 1880 and 1900, W.R. McEntire acquired additional rangeland throughout Glasscock, Howard, Mitchell, Nolan, Sterling, Tom Green, and Reagan Counties, enlarging the "U" Ranch operations to include over 250,000 acres (1,000 km2) with approximately 105,000 acres (420 km2) located in Glasscock and Reagan Counties.

Under the new homestead law, settlers began purchasing the “even-numbered” sections from the state for the benefit of the Common School Fund in 1883.

As a result of Common School Fund process, W.R. McEntire, while in Dallas, sent representatives from Tom Green County to acquire as much land as possible and to keep others out of the line until the desired acreage was obtained.

North Carolinian James Jefferson Lafayott Glass came to the county in 1883 and signed on with the Sterling Brothers’ Half Circle S outfit.

[13][14][15] As the era of the open range began to conclude, W.R. McEntire realized that contiguous acreage would be increasingly important to the success of any cattle outfit, and he began quickly purchasing any available acreage with the prospect of establishing a buffer around the "U" Ranch, or selling or bartering that acquisition for adjoining acreage to his primary operation, either under a single operation and single fence line, or perhaps having access to large, disparate ranches that could provide the ability to easily move livestock between operations.

In 1890, W.R. McEntire sold the 105,000 acres (420 km2) in Glasscock and Reagan Counties, including 3,000 head of cattle and 100 horses, to J.B.

Slaughter sold the acreage and moved his cattle and operations to his new U Lazy S Ranch in Borden and Garza Counties.

He also received a cash advance from the dissolution of McEntire and Co. and from investments made in the American National Bank in Dallas.

Of the same year, he purchased 10,000 acres in Nolan and Mitchell Counties, and moved his family to Colorado City, Texas, to send his children to school.

This partnership lasted from circa 1915 to 1928, and was dissolved as a result of the brothers becoming owners and subsequently managing their own operations in Sterling County.

Eventually, Fowler and James H. McEntire purchased their brothers' interests, with each owning one-half of the acreage in Sterling County.

As open range areas gave way to farming homesteaders who fenced their land, cattlemen found it more difficult to feed their herds.

Newspapers condemned the fence cutters, and property owners employed their own armed security forces.

Texas Governor John Ireland prodded a special assembly to order the fence cutters to cease.