The historic Powell Ranch is located on the western edge of the Copperas Cove City limits west of Bea Powell Road and bordered on the south and west by Oak Springs Road. The era of cattle drives began in 1866. Destined for Kansas, huge herds of Longhorns were grazed from South Texas to about where Round Rock is today and then the famous Chisholm Trail divided. One branch of the trail ran through Belton – you can still see the wagon tracks at Camp Tahuaya – and the other one went more westerly through Lampasas. What is now Kempner, Copperas Cove and the Powell Ranch were in the middle with plentiful native prairie grasses such as Indian Grass, Big Bluestem, Little Bluestem, and Switch Grass for the grazing herds.

Deed records show that the Powell Ranch was originally owned by W.H. Davis who received it in 1838 as a land grant from the Republic of Texas for his service in the Texas Revolution at the Battle of San Jacinto. Wild mustangs, Longhorn cattle and migrating buffalo grazed here then. However, Davis never resided on the property because, at the time of his ownership, it was still a part of the Comanchería. A lone gravestone located on the Baugh Ranch in adjacent Mills County illustrates this danger a generation later recording that a “B. Pane” was “killed by Indians in 1863”. In fact, records suggest Comanches continued to launch raids into Coryell County well into the 1870s. Cove’s early German settlers arrived while Comanche sign and buffalo bones were still fresh and wild Longhorn cattle roamed on the open grassland. Joe Kattner’s family who homesteaded the ranch probably ate the last Longhorns and stretched the first barbed wires across what is now the Powell Ranch prior to the arrival of the railroad in 1882. Traces of the Kattners’ pioneer homesteads can still be seen on the ranch today.

Settlers like the Kattners, with their plows and barbed wire, ended to the cattle drive era and almost eliminated Longhorns entirely. They farmed and ranched here for the next 50 years. Bea Powell, the namesake of Bea Powell Road, purchased the property in 1947. Ownership of the property passed from Bea and Verna to their sons and eventually to Glynn Powell and his family. Glynn’s wife and high school sweetheart, Dorothy, is a direct descendant of Joe Kattner creating a combined family heritage in the property extending back in time nearly 150 years. Today, the ranch is owned by the Powell Dreyer Family, LLC and managed by Glynn Powell and Dorothy Powell and their descendants.

Today, the Powell Ranch is home to not only the Powell Family and their guests but also to a beautiful herd of registered Texas Longhorns and occasionally their Wagyu-Angus crossbred (“Wangus”) cattle, as well as an abundance of whitetail, jack rabbits, turkey, doves and a few ducks. Predators such as mountain lions, coyotes and bobcats have been seen on the ranch in recent months.