The Hughes Osage County ranch started as a land purchase in 1938 by John Hughes’s father, an oil industry pioneer with Phillips Petroleum Co. John Hughes was a junior in high school when he purchased his first cattle — at $100 a head for strays he had gathered for Boots Adams of Phillips Petroleum.

After graduating from College High School in 1951, Hughes attended Oklahoma A&M College — now Oklahoma State University — earning a bachelor’s degree in animal science. He left college in 1955 and took over the day-to-day management of the Hughes cattle operation.

John maintained the ranch as a cow/calf operation for more than 30 years before converting it to a stocker business in the late 1980s. Since 1989, the Hughes Ranch has also been the home to thousands of adopted wild mustangs.

Under his direction, the Hughes Ranch grew from 1,800 acres when it was started until it covered more than 12,000 acres. The ranch property extends from just southwest of Bartlesville to the northern border of Woolaroc.

Among his many honors, Hughes was inducted as the 16th member into the Oklahoma Agriculture Hall of Fame.

At the 100th Bartlesville Birthday celebration in 1997, Hughes was presented with a Centennial Medallion for his contributions to the community in cattle and agriculture. He was honored in May 2011 by the Bartlesville Community Foundation, which inducted the Hughes family into its Bartlesville Legacy Hall of Fame.

John was 80 when he died June 19, 2013.

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