photo courtesy The LH7 Ranch:Since working as a ranch hand as a teenager, Emil Marks maintained a passion for longhorns.
Family founded successful LH7 Ranch
In 1898, Emil Henry Marks registered the LH7 brand in Harris County to begin breeding cattle on his 63-acre ranch in Addicks. In its peak, the ranch housed more than 6,000 cattle on 36,000 acres. It spanned what is now the Addicks and Barker reservoirs.
Emil's grandparents were Prussian immigrants who arrived in Galveston in 1843, and they were charged with caring for Emil when he was 10 years old after his parents died. The burden of caring for four children overwhelmed Emil's grandparents, and he was soon sent to live with an aunt and uncle in Pattison where he worked as a ranch hand—the beginning of his cattleman's career.
He officially founded the ranch in 1907, the same year he married Maud May Smith. Ten years later, the couple relocated the ranch closer to Barker and began staging small riding and roping contests to entertain neighboring ranchers who helped him brand his cattle. The small events eventually gathered steam and transformed into an annual ranch rodeo that attracted thousands from Houston for 30 years.
