In 1903, at the age of 13, Leroy Spires Sr. left his home in Bell County, Texas, and joined a cattle drive headed northwest for the country around Nolan County, where he later settled permanently.  He cowboyed for various cattle outfits in the area and homesteaded two sections in nearby Kent County----these two sections are still a part of the Spires ranches today.  By 1915, Leroy Sr. had put together enough cattle to purchase his own ranch near the town of Roscoe in Nolan County.  There he met and married Mary Ann Howe.  

     Leroy Spires Jr. was born in Roscoe on October 19, 1921, and was raised on his father’s ranch.  He began breeding American Quarter Horses in 1933 when he bred his Steel Dust daughter to his father’s Harmon Baker stallion, Jim.  He went on to build a herd that averaged 150 horses at its peak.  When he was 17 years old, he launched his own cattle operation.  In 1949, he married Ramona Evelyn Keller of Snyder in neighboring Scurry County.  By the time of Leroy Sr’s death in 1964, Leroy Jr. and his father had put together ranches and cow/calf operations encompassing 180,000 acres in Nolan, Fisher, Kent, and Scurry counties in Texas, and Guadalupe, Grant, and Catron counties in New Mexico.  Leroy Jr. had also established the Lobo Oil Company.  

     While his ranching empire grew, Leroy Jr. turned his attention to horse racing.  He considered the racetrack a proving ground and used his training program to determine a horse’s potential for arena work or a place in his breeding herd.  Runners like Careless Curl, Leading Jet, Birthday Dial, Chappo S and Chicada Delores came out of Leroy Jr.’s training program.  Six of his horses set or equaled track records, and his top performers include five AQHA Superior Race Horse award winners and 35 racing Register of Merit recipients.  Leroy Jr. also bred cutting and halter champions.

     In 1997, AQHA established the first Legacy Awards to honor breeders who had registered at least one foal a year for at least 50 years since the AQHA’s founding in 1940.  One of only 18 breeders to achieve a Legacy Award at the time of its inception, Leroy Spires Jr. was posthumously granted the award for his 53 consecutive years of breeding.  Since his death in 1991, his daughters Cindy Ann Spires and Susan Spires Ruch have preserved the family’s ranching heritage and continued the Spires family ranching operation. The sisters now run the Spires ranches in Texas and the Moon Ranch in New Mexico, where they maintain cow/calf operations and continue to breed American Quarter Horses. Spires Ranch philosophy is “We need a horse with cow instincts but the size and stamina to make a big circle and at the same time we want them to look pretty doing it.”

     Spires Ranch now has the stallions Quentice Mecom Blue and Kiehne Firewaterfame.  Foaled in 2006, Quentice Mecom Blue, aka ”Leroy,” is by the Haidas Little Pep stallion Mecom Blue and in 2012 won the non-pro 5-&-Up class at the Ranch Horse Association of America Western Heritage Classic.

     Kiehne Firewaterfame is a 2011 son of Dash Ta Fame.  Bred to daughters of “Leroy”, the stallion’s first crop was on the ground Spring 2020.  Spires Ranch has 25 broodmares, 13 of which are daughters of Quentice Mecom Blue.

     In 2020, the Spires Ranch was recognized once again by the AQHA as one of only 14 breeders who have been breeding American Quarter Horses for 80 years — which is as long as AQHA has been in existence.