Otto Carl Barby was a rancher and homesteader in the “No Man’s Land” of the Oklahoma panhandle. He built one of the state’s largest ranches of 80,000 acres, despite twice being nearly wiped out by blizzard and drought.
Barby was a conservationist who preached against plowing up grass, which he warned would create dust bowls. He built a regional empire that proved his belief in the cattle industry as a way of life.
Barby was born in St. Louis in 1865 and spent his early youth near Dodge City, Kansas. Eleven years before Oklahoma statehood, he homesteaded in what would become Beaver County. The Blizzard of 1912 destroyed $10,000 worth of Barby’s cattle, and he was hit again during the droughts of the 1930s, but he rebuilt his operation both times.
