ROAD TRIP: A BBM Game

[memento]

Omen, Texas

OMEN, TEXAS. Omen, also known at various times as Round Hill, Canton, Clopton, Troup, and Old Canton, is a rural community on State Highway 345 in southeastern Smith County about two miles west of Arp and just south of Omen Road Bay. The area was first settled when Arnold O'Brien and his family arrived in 1848. The following year the county commissioners' court decided to build the Larissa-Shreveport Road through the northern part of O'Brien's land, and the road made the settlement accessible to other pioneers. In December 1849 O'Brien established in his home a post office that he named Round Hill. Thomas M. Bell also opened an inn as a stage stop on the Tyler-Henderson Road. In 1850 Thomas H. Weatherby, Mitus White, and James W. Powell bought a thirty-acre tract from Rebecca Mar Hill. Powell later sold his share to Alexander Douglas. The partners divided their property into lots and appointed themselves commissioners for the new town. In 1851 Thomas N. Gregory replaced O'Brien as postmaster and changed the name of the settlement to Canton. David H. Lindsey and Isaac Wayman Engledow opened the first store in Canton in 1852. That year citizens changed the name of the town to Clopton because the seat of Van Zandt County was also called Canton. A two-story shop, built by Lively and Walker, became the meeting place for the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Masons. Other stores were established, and David Lindsey sold 2½ acres to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

The post office was discontinued briefly in 1854, then reopened under the name of Troup by Daniel P. Fowler. Residents, however, continued to call the town Canton, even in legal documents. In 1860 a deed called it "Canton-alias Troup," and Masonic Lodge No. 98 was officially recognized as Canton Lodge. By then the town had a blacksmith, a doctor, a cabinet and wagon maker, a dentist, a carpenter, and two teachers. A sawmill and a tannery were located nearby. Troup continued to prosper during the Civil War,qv but the advent of the railroad system in Smith County led to its decline. Early in the 1870s the International-Great Northern built a line northward through the eastern part of the county to Longview from a point approximately four miles south of Canton. Within a few years, traffic on the Tyler-Henderson road decreased significantly, and Bell's Inn was closed. Many local businesses moved south to Zavalla, a new railroad town. In 1877 the post office was moved there, although it kept the name Troup.

[MaineWriter]

Marathon, TX

 Marathon is usually thought of as the entry to Big Bend National Park. It was named for its supposed resemblance to Marathon, Greece. It's possible, since we haven't visited Marathon, Greece for a comparison, but somehow we doubt it.


History in a Pecan Shell

The Halff Brothers of Alsace-Lorraine were Jewish merchants that eventually owned one million acres of land from San Antonio to Ft. Stockton. There were three, but one was drowned during a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. They operated the Circle Dot Ranch** near Marathon until they found out rustlers could easily burn over their brand. They rode on trail drives, but soon found they preferred leather in the form of banker's chairs and opened banks in San Antonio. One half of the Halff brothers, (Mayer) brought some of the first Hereford Cattle into the state.

**As a variation to the chicken/egg conundrum - TE asks which branding iron did they use first? Did they burn the dot in and try to put the circle around it, or did they have a contest to see who could put the dot in the circle?


Camp Pena Colorado

The Halff Brothers leased out the land for Camp Pena Colorado to the U.S. Army for 15 years, until the Indian threat dissolved. The camp was located about 4 miles southwest of Marathon. The camp was first occupied in 1879. It had water and was on the road connecting Ft. Clark and Ft. Davis, but was quite primitive. The coming of the railroad in 1882, improved things somewhat.

David St. Clair Combs, local rancher, donated the land for a public park in 1935. It's used by locals today and is barely known to visitors.

The Gage Hotel

Historic Register Property - most visible landmark in Marathon.

According to Docia Schultz Williams, the Gage has at least 3 resident spooks. Ask for room 10 if you want to be a believer.

The Gage was designed by Architects Trost and Trost who also built El Paisano in Marfa and El Capitan in Van Horn. All three were built in 1926. The builder of the Gage died one year after its completion. The Gage Hotel Chef is featured (as well as three of his recipies) in the book Top Texas Chefs' Favorite Recipes by Ginnie Siena Bivona and Sharry Buckner, Republic of Texas Press, 1999.

Leslie

[jpwagoneer1964]

New Fairview , Tx

[moremojo]

Wimberley, Texas

--situated in Hays County; has become something of a bedroom community for those in the greater Austin metropolitan area.

[Meryl]

Yowell, TX

[jpwagoneer1964]

Lamesa, Tx

History of Lamesa

 

Lamesa's first inhabitants were Paleo-Indians who hunted in the area and camped along Sulfer Springs Draw about 17,000 years ago.  In later times the Apaches and later Comanche's also used the draw as camp sites for their hunting activities on the plains. Sulpur Springs Draw also served as a route for later ranchers and settlers traveling to the railhead in Big Spring.

 

Dawson County was organized in 1905 and named in honor of Nicholas Mosby Dawson 1808-1842 who fought at the Battle of San Jacinto and fell at Dawson's Massacre. The 1900 Census listed 37 persons residing in Dawson County. 

 

The City of Lamesa had its beginnings in July, 1903 when a block of 160 acres was carved out of the home section of Frank Conner’s Ranch. Earlier the town site had been part of the large Slaughter Ranch, famous for its “Lazy S” brand. By this time ranching had been established in the area for more than 30 years. 

 

Lamesa was plotted into lots, by M.C. Lindsey,  Frank Connor,  J. F. Barron, and several others about two miles south of the town of Chicago, which had been established in 1893. The name Lamesa was taken from the Spanish word Mesa meaning “Tableland” because it was descriptive of the town’s location on the high plateau of the South Plains. A. L. Wasson, a member of the first town committee offered La Mesa and Lamesa as possible names. Mr. Wasson preferred the Spanish version but the committee voted in favor of Lamesa.

 

A rivalry grew between Lamesa and Chicago and the post office was moved from Chicago to Lamesa. An election was held in 1905 to determine the new county seat of Dawson County. Lamesa won by a margin of five votes. The residents of Chicago were invited to move their town to Lamesa and the move was made in two days. Chicago passed into history and is today remembered by a historical marker on North 22nd Street. 

 

The first school was opened in Lamesa in 1902. Daily mail service was initiated in 1906 via a stage line from Big Spring. The Santa Fe Railroad operating as the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway Company began rail service to Lamesa on October 1, 1910. Lamesa received it’s first telephone service in 1905 and electric service began in 1916. 

 

During World War II Lamesa and Dawson County provided more men per capita for the armed services than did any other county in Texas.  Dawson County was one of the five counties in the state to win the coveted Army Navy "E" award. Lamesa Field, an army airfield, was established in 1942 to give elementary and advanced glider training to army aviation cadets. The training field was deactivated on February, 1944. 

 

The City of Lamesa was incorporated in 1917 and the first large project came in 1925 when a new city hall, water and sewer system and the brick streets around the square were built. In 1945 a home-rule charter was adopted establishing a council-manager form of government. 

 

A new City Hall, located at 310 South Main was dedicated in 1963. The Old City Hall at the corner of South First and Dallas was remodeled as the new Public Safety Building housing the Police and Fire Departments.   In 1993 the City purchased the old Lamesa Federal/Bluebonnet Savings & Loan Building at 601 South First Street and converted it into a new Municipal Building housing the City Administration and Police Departments. The old city hall buildings were sold.   

 

W.C. Bishop of Chicago, Illinois, and wealthy lumberman George N. Fletcher established the Oto (later Bar To) ranch about 1887 on Fletcher's extensive landholdings in Dawson County. A post office was opened at the ranch headquarters on May 15, 1889, and named Chicago, both in honor of Bishop's home town and in humorous reference to the sparse population of the area. The postal facility served other large ranches in this vicinity, such as C. C. Slaughter's Long S. In the 1890s, Fletcher left the ranching venture, and A. F. Crowley and W. H. Godair became Bishop's partners.

 

By that time, a village had begun to grow up around the post office. B. A. Oden served as Oto ranch foreman and Postmaster of Chicago from 1894 to 1903. When Walter Stemmons replaced him in both positions in 1904, the settlement was renamed Stemmons. The same year, a post office was established in the new town of Lamesa, two miles south of Chicago. Dawson County was organized in 1905, and both towns entered the contest for county seat. When Lamesa won, residents of Chicago quickly relocated their homes and businesses there. The school and Baptist and Methodist churches also moved to Lamesa, within days, the Community of Chicago has disappeared.

 

For more about the history of Dawson County, please visit the Handbook of Texas Online from the Texas Historical Association.   

 
There is a LA Mesa adjacent to San diego near my home.

Mark 

[MaineWriter]

Allred, TX

 The town is believed to have been named to honor Governor James Allred. Allred (the town) got off to a late start. Walter E. Young and M. A. Shields are credited with founding the 40-acre townsite in 1937, soon after oil was discovered in the vicinity. A water well was dug and construction of buildings began in January of 1938.

The first lot was sold in February and the post office opened in May of '38. Being the Depression and knowing what had happened to other boom towns, city fathers quickly acquired 120 additional acres to accomodate a population estimated to eventually reach 3,000.

Walter Young sold his interest in the townsite to one Pat Malone in January of 1939; under Malone's leadership, the light plant was enlarged and a telephone system was installed. Allred reached a population of 1,200 in 1939, making it the largest town in the county. Allred got it's first newspaper - the Allred Times on May 25, 1939. Publisher Roy Royal published one issue of the newspaper and it folded for reasons not known. By 1940 the population of Allred started a decline without coming near the projected 3,000. After WWII it was down to only 750 residents.

During the school consolidations, Allred's school district merged with that of Sligo. The Allred school was later put to use as a community building.

In the late 50s there were only five households left and theYoakum County Gas Company cut off their service - saying that it wasn't worth the cost of supplying them. In 1957 church, post office, and grocery closed and the last time it was recorded (1964) Allred's population was 50.

Leslie

[Fran]

Denison, TX

Denison was the birthplace of the thirty-fourth president of the United States, Dwight David Eisenhower.  The home he was born in in 1890 has been returned to its original appearance and sits in the Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site, a three-acre area that includes a museum.

[jpwagoneer1964]

New Hope, Tx

NEW HOPE, TEXAS (Wood County). New Hope is on Farm Road 1801 four miles east of Mineola and a mile north of the Missouri Pacific line (formerly Texas and Pacific) in southern Wood County. The community apparently moved north to this site from an earlier location, as there is a New Hope cemetery just south of the railroad line and about a mile south of the present location of the New Hope Baptist Church. The area was settled as early as 1842, when Georgia native Nathan Warren homesteaded his land grant at the site of what would later become the New Hope community. About twenty years later the area saw an influx of planters from Louisiana, who were said to have named the area "New Hope" because they hoped to regain their fortunes there. Reportedly no established community developed at that time. By sometime in the 1880s an establishment called the Bluejack Academy was serving the New Hope area with a summer school, and in 1884 the New Hope public school district was established. By 1896 the local one-teacher public school was serving thirty-two white students; ten years later the number of students had risen to forty-seven. By 1917 a Baptist church, originally founded in 1864 in nearby Greer's Neighborhood (later known as Golden Rule), had, after several moves and name changes, established itself as the New Hope Baptist Church at the second, more northerly site of the community. In 1932 the New Hope school district had four teachers for 126 white students in ten grades and one teacher for thirty-three black students in seven grades. In the 1940s New Hope had a church, five businesses, and a number of dwellings. By 1960 only a church and a number of widely scattered dwellings remained at the site, though by 1988 the community had gained a number of new dwellings and a school. New Hope apparently never had its own post office but was on the mail route from Mineola. The New Hope Baptist Church received a Texas Historical Commissionqv marker in the early 1980s.

Mark

[MaineWriter]

Ecleto, TX

When a post office was established [in present Ecleto] in 1852, the town was then known as Cleto and was in Bexar county. In 1854, following the formation of Karnes County, the Post Office Department designated the office as Ecleto. In 1921, Walter G. Riedel, nephew of Carl Edward Riedel (the man that Gillett, Texas had originally been named after) and others built a cooperative store and cotton gin here to serve the surrounding farm community. The post office was moved and opened in the store at that time. Although the store closed in 1971, the post office continued until June 30, 1987, when it was converted into a neighborhood delivery and collection-box unit."

It is also believed that there was a gin prior to 1921 - but the fact that the 1921 gin was cooperative makes it noteworthy.

Leslie