The railroad reached this area before most settlers, in a region where farms were giving way to cattle ranches. Ree Heights was platted by the Love Brothers in May 1882, and its first postmaster was Wm. H. Love on 8 June 1882. Three miles south lay the Ree Heights, rolling, watered grassland. Early arrivals included F. E. and L. W. Lansing, Volney T. Hogatt, John O'Brien, the section boss, his son Jerry, the first white boy born in Hand County, Charles and Matty Turner, and John T. Cogan. With good range country all around, early brands included Jules DeSomer's Monkey Wrench, Gardner Brothers' 77, Ronald Lauson's RL Rail, John O'Brien's JO, H. E. Price's Triple 1 Quartercircle, and P. Walkins's Quartercircle 2; a later brand in the area was Joe Poindexter's P Arrow. Brand reading had its own vocabulary: a letter could be reverse, tumbling, lazy, running, flying, walking, or rocking, and one character could swing from another. A box differed from a bench, short horizontals were bars and long horizontals were sometimes rails, and diamonds, triangles, circles, crescents, and stars kept their names. A cross was usually read as a cross, though sometimes as a plus; other marks included a rafter, a slash, and a quarter circle. Connected letters or symbols were read as connected, and individual characters also included millirons, an anvil, and an arrow; a rafter joined to other letters was usually called an open A.