STEPHENVILLE—Frank Terrell, who owns the state-recognized Great Southern Ranch, has had to defend it from threats of fire because of a three-year drought. Now he and his family are trying to defend it from a proposed transmission line.
A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Agriculture verified it accepted the ranch into its 2026 Family Land Heritage Registry. The ranch is set to be honored on October 26.
Bonnie Terrell, Frank’s daughter, said her family’s ranch is on the “best meets” route for electricity delivery company Oncor’s proposed Dinosaur Switch to Longshore Switch 765-kilovolt transmission line. If the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) approves it, the line would range 235-270 miles from near Glen Rose to west of Forsan.
Frank, who is 88 years old, said his father bought the Great Southern Ranch in 1943. It runs more than 2.8 miles from east to west and borders the north side of Stephenville. His father ran the ranch and worked as a physician. Originally he started it as a small dairy with a small beef operation.
“I wanted to be a farmer, and he said I’d never make a living at it,” Frank told Texas Scorecard. So he went to medical school, then Vietnam for a year, before coming back home. Frank practiced medicine for 50 years while running the ranch. Though he retired as an ophthalmologist in 2020, he still runs the ranch. “I love the place,” he said.
The ranch has been a labor of love. Along with his brother-in-law, Frank restarted the dairy operation his dad shuttered, then closed it again roughly 15 years ago. “We couldn’t really make ends meet with the dairy after it got taken over by the multi-1000 dairies that we’ve got in the country now,” he said. “We increased the beef cow part of it to about 300 cows, and that’s what we’ve continued to do.”
For the last few years the family has had to battle drought conditions. “We normally raise about 1500 large bales to feed our cows, and a couple of those years we raised less than 100,” Frank said. “I actually spent $300,000 buying hay because at my age I knew if I sold my cows I’d never get back in it.”
The drought has also left the family worried about wildfire risk. “It’s kind of a tinderbox right now,” Bonnie said.
Now they’re battling a transmission line project. According to Frank, the proposed Dinosaur Switch to Longshore Switch route would cross about five of the ranch’s nine productive bottomland pastures and fields, which support coastal grass for hay and grazing and include fields used for sorghum. “It’s going to make it very difficult for us to operate, and it certainly will have to be a lower volume, and it’d be very hard to hire a full time hand and break even with it,” he said.
“That land will be out of production during the construction phase,” Bonnie added. “We don’t know how long and to what extent, and it doesn’t take very many years of low to no production to have a tremendous financial impact.”
Complicated Process
She said her parents were notified by mail of a June 2025 public meeting about the proposed line. Bonnie and her husband went with her parents. Then, in February, she said her parents received a packet from Oncor notifying them that their ranch was on one of the routes, the best meets route.
“After we got that packet, it scared my wife and I,” Frank said. The Terrell family sprang into action. “My younger sister spent many, many hours and days and weeks just calling attorney firms across Texas, seeing if we can find representation, because we quickly realized, in order to navigate this complicated PUC process, we had to have some sort of guidance,” Bonnie said.
“The speed at which this moves, it’s impossible to properly assimilate all the information that’s coming in to know what the next steps are to meet the deadlines,” she said. “The process is stacked against the landowners from the start.”
A law firm referred the family to Margaret Pemberton, who came out of retirement to assist them. The Terrell family fought through the administrative law hearing process. Bonnie said the link that crosses their ranch, C3, remains in both Oncor’s preferred route and the ALJs’ proposed Route 559, while it was not in the route PUCT staff recommended.
Love of the Land
The Terrells are intent on protecting what they love. “When you get used to being close to nature and raising a garden and all this kind of stuff, it just becomes part of you. It’s the reason why the farmers are staying out here as long as they possibly can,” Frank said. “I love it so much.”
Bonnie explained how watching her parents go through this breaks her heart. “They should be enjoying the things that they enjoy, which is the love of the land and being out in the country and their animals,” she said. “Instead, we’ve spent the last six months fighting this and advocating for not only ourselves but as many people as we can, and it’s consumed our family.”
The Dinosaur Switch to Longshore Switch line is part of the 765-kV Strategic Transmission Expansion Plan (STEP) Permian, a key part of the Permian Basin Reliability Plan (PBRP). STEP Permian proposes three transmission lines spanning more than 1,200 miles to move electricity from East Texas to the natural gas-rich Permian Basin. Dinosaur to Longshore would join with the Longshore to Drill Hole line to form the northernmost line. A pro-landowner group likened the project “to hauling water to the sea.”
The Texas Public Policy Foundation estimates the lifetime cost of all STEP projects that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) approved through December 2025 at nearly $100 billion. Critics have argued that PUCT, ERCOT, and Oncor transformed a regional reliability directive into a de facto statewide 765‑kV grid plan without state lawmakers’ authorization.
The Terrells said they recognize Texas’ need for reliable transmission but contend that the scale and permanence of the project warrant a pause to verify the need and consider alternatives. They want PUCT to deny all the applications so state lawmakers can step in and assess the situation and all alternatives. “We hope that we can have a pause, a denial, and let our leaders take a look at not only the whole plan but the PUC process,” Bonnie said.
Frank said, “The senators and the representatives ought to have a say in this thing.”
PUCT is set to consider three segments of the STEP Permian lines, including Dinosaur to Longshore, on Friday, August 28. Landowners impacted by the proposed lines and lawmakers have urged PUCT to deny all of the pending 765-kV applications until after the 2027 state legislative session.
American Stewards of Liberty and a more than 30-member coalition that includes the Texas Public Policy Foundation have requested that PUCT abate all five segments.
Oncor did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
