Draft note. Details and supporting sources are still being reviewed.
Joseph Cox is the man behind the Bison Jay name: a cattleman in the Big Valley bottoms and a county sheriff in 1887.
Born in 1836, Jay has worked the Kansas cattle trails, served two years with the Rangers, and built a herd of his own. He is 51 when he becomes sheriff, with fencing disputes to settle and drought threatening his cattle.
A name with a reason
The alias comes from a stampede at the Platte. Joseph Cox holds the point of a running herd long enough to bend it into a mill, and a cook says he stood like an old bull bison in the current. The crew takes up the name, and Jay brings it home to Texas.
“The name stuck. Nobody argues with a cook.”
The full account follows Jay from an East Texas stock farm to the new courthouse at Goldthwaite. You’ll find it, along with the timeline, under The Story.
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