Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > The Lighter Side

ROAD TRIP: A BBM Game

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Meryl:
Goose Egg, WY



A Close Call on the C.Y. Cattle Trail
by Rick Bonander

It was a cool crisp morning in early October 1877. George and Gilbert Searight had just brought up 27,000 longhorns from Texas. These cows were almost as wild as the buffalo on the open range that they were replacing. The Searight brothers were stocking the Goose Egg Ranch that they had just started. That spring a couple of the cowboys had found a nest full of Canadian Goose eggs and brought them back to camp for the cook to fry up for breakfast. They all thought that Goose Egg Ranch would be a good and fitting name for the new spread.

These wild longhorns had a tendency to wander far and wide over the range and it was a full time job for all of the ranch hands to keep them near the ranch boundaries. George Searight had gotten an early start and found two stray steers almost ten miles up the North Platte River from the ranch house. He was driving them back toward home along the C.Y. ranch house and just up from the river stood a huge old solitary buffalo bull blocking the trail. Ownership of that particular part of the trail was certainly in question. The bison charged the oncoming longhorns and the lone cowboy. It was only a matter of luck and of course good riding that no one was killed or maimed and all made it back home sagely. Yup, just another day in the life of a Wyoming cowboy.

This story certainly could be true, if not, it ought to be.

MaineWriter:
Granny's Neck, TX

 The community was named - not after a grandmother's anatomical feature - but a "neck" of land that jutted into the South Sulphur River. Granny was Mary "Granny" Sinclair, matriarch of a settler family that raised goats on this neck of land. Hence Granny's Neck.

Granny's Neck was a crossing on the once important Bonham-Jefferson road. Brigidier DeSpain, and his wife, Narcissa, arrived in 1846 to claim land that had been awarded to a relative who had been killed at Goliad. Since their grant included both sides of the river, they built a bridge and made a living charging people to cross.

A flood destroyed the bridge in the 1870s and the crossing was then named after the state appointed tollkeeper - G. W. Harper. After enough tolls were collected to pay off the bridge, the tollkeeper was relieved of duties and the bordering counties maintained the bridge. As the population dwindled, the road was closed.

Granny's Neck once had a school, but was later moved to nearby Pecan Grove.

Leslie

jpwagoneer1964:
Channelview, Tx

CHANNELVIEW, TEXAS. Channelview (Channel View), an oil refinery suburb of metropolitan Houston, is at the site where the San Jacinto River forms Old River, south of Interstate Highway 10 and the Missouri Pacific Railroad and eight miles southeast of Houston in eastern Harris County. It was named for its location on the northeastern curve of the Houston Ship Channelqv and was populated by blue-collar oil refinery workers and their families after oil discoveries in the area in 1916. After 1910, schools for both black and white students opened as ship channel industries grew. Beginning sometime before 1916 and continuing as late as 1942, the McGhee School served black students. The local white school had thirty-one pupils in 1925. A post office was established at the community in 1933, and the 1936 county highway map showed a sawmill, a school, several businesses, and multiple dwellings at the site. By 1938 the Channelview school district covered twenty square miles and employed one black teacher and seven white. Channelview reported a population of fifty and two businesses in 1940, and grew to 700 residents and twenty-three businesses by 1947. In 1967 a new Sinclair Petrochemical plant began production of isophthalic acid and metaxylene near the ship channel. At that time the town had a population of 7,860 and seventy-five businesses. Its population was 8,227 in the mid-1970s. In 1985 Channelview had 347 businesses. In the early 1990s it had a population of 26,115 and 385 businesses. In 2000 the population was 29,685 with 659 businesses.

You can own this lively home in Channeview for $145,000.

Mark

memento:
Whitehouse, Texas

Whitehouse is a city in Smith County, in the Tyler metro area.
The latitude of Whitehouse is 32.226N. The longitude is -95.225W. It is in the Central Standard time zone. Elevation is 476 feet.

The estimated population, in 2003, was 6,582.

Meryl:
Posters, we have another SIDE TRIP opportunity!  Since Mark posted a letter that did not follow the post before his and Sandy has already posted according to his answer, rather than have them edit, I am declaring a SIDE TRIP.

The next poster can start with any letter of their choosing!  8)

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