Clear Fork/Fort Griffin

Albany | Clear Fork | Flats | Fort Davis | Fort Griffin

Early settlers to this far-flung region felt protected by the army facility at Camp Cooper. During the Civil War, emboldened Comanches and Kiowas raided the Clear Fork area several times. Families forted-up through early reconstruction and surprisingly the population grew and prospered during this time.

Fort Griffin
From the book, Panhandle Pilgrimage, by Pauline Durrett and R.L. Robertson

Wyatt Earp

Doc Holliday

In fact as well as in most movie and television versions, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday began their legendary partnership at a saloon in the Flats when Doc gave Wyatt the goods on Johnny Reno. The Burt Lancaster/Kirk Douglas version, Gunfight at the OK Corral, had Wyatt passing Fort Griffin's Boot Hill on his way to Dodge City.

Cross Plains Road Trip
Click on the map above to activate and enlarge.

Visit Fort Griffin, Albany and Fort Phantom Hill and continue through Abilene on the Texas Fort Trail. Travel south through Forts Chadbourne and Concho into the Hill Country at Fort McKavett.

The profitability of the modern cattle business that was born in the early 50s in the Keechi Valley caused it to spread across neighboring prairies.

Ty Cashion's observations are from his book, A Texas Frontier.

...In 1865, cow hunters began probing for markets, trailing herds to distant locations over familiar paths and also blazing new ones. Early in the summer, a Dr. West and T.L. Stockton gathered beef steers from the Clear Fork range and headed for Shreveport and New Orleans, favorite outlets for East Texas ranchers even before the days of the Republic. Others followed, such as Charles Neuhaus and William G. Hoover, but turbulent social conditions soon closed that avenue. That autumn, George Reynolds, Silas Hough, and Riley St. John drove 125 head to Santa Fe. Taking a southwesterly course through Taylor County, they crossed each of the Concho's three forks before braving a dry and unforgiving stretch of desert to Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos. From there they followed the river north into New Mexico. A few months later Cross Timbers stockmen Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving-for whom the route was named-picked up this course after pushing a herd through the Clear Fork country bound for Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Visionary businessman Joseph G. McCoy opened the floodgates for all Texas cattlemen in 1867, when he convinced promoters to establish a railhead at Abilene, Kansas. Within a few years local ranchers were driving cattle to places as far away as the gold fields of California and the open plains of the Dakotas.

[Jordan, Trails to Texas, 71; Newcomb Diary, July 1-19, 1865, entry of Susan Newcomb, Jan. 4, 1867; Matthews, Interwoven, 25, 77; Webb, "Life of Phin Reynolds," 117-18; Reynolds interview; Haley, Charles Goodnight, 119; Larry Earl Adams, "Economic Development in Texas during Reconstruction, 1865-1875" (Ph.D. diss., North Texas State University, Denton, 1980), 162.]

Buffalo Camp
From the book, A Texas Frontier, by Ty Cashion

In April (1867) some of the Clear Fork herders exacted revenge against the Comanches for recent raids. T.E. Jackson, John and Mitch Anderson, Silas Hough, George and William Reynolds, and several others pursued a party of warriors to the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos near the Haskell-Stonewall County line, where they noticed a large cloud of dust kicked up by running buffalo. A closer look revealed seven Indians-actually, five Comanches, accompanied by a Hispanic man and an African American in Indian clothing-slaughtering one of the beasts. Abandoning their quarry, the warriors charged the cow hunters. One "Indian" all by emptied two six-shooters in the direction of George Reynolds, who had separated from the others. The herder dropped the warrior from his horse, however, and later killed him by breaking his neck. Another of the Comanches shot Reynolds with an arrow, its iron spike lodging in his back, where it was to remain for several years. The cattlemen soon forced the warriors into a full retreat, with Silas Hough hotly chasing the one who had wounded his friend. He soon returned with several trophies, including the Indian's scalp. In all, they had lifted the hair from five corpses and left another adversary mortally wounded.

Buffalo Hides
From the book, Panhandle Pilgrimage, by Pauline Durrett and R.L. Robertson

...Governor Throckmorton had finally prevailed upon the War Department to provide relief for the Texas frontier.

...Sheridan and Fifth Military District commander General Charles Griffin had launched a stopgap plan late in 1866 that presaged the placement of the troops that the young drover Boyd had encountered the following spring. From their makeshift base at Jacksboro the 6 th Cavalry was to guard the frontier line as far as old Camp Cooper; the 4th Cavalry was assigned the area from the Colorado River to the Mexican border.

...The smartly dressed federal troops, with their shiny brass buttons and gleaming bayonets, cut an imposing spectacle to the homespun-clad herder folk. And the soldiers' self-assured march into the Clear Fork country might have seemed "as a breeze from another world," as Sallie Matthews remembered, but she was only six years old at the time. While most of the pioneers welcomed any help they could get, many among them no doubt received the troops with bated enthusiasm. After all, this force had occupied the state for two years without visiting the frontier, and only a few months earlier they had been harassing "honest white folk" in the interior. Texans also remembered that U.S. troops had maintained a presence before the Civil War, endeavoring for more than a dozen years to pacify the backcountry. When those troops surrendered their garrisons to the rebels in 1861, however, the Indians were even more of a menace than when the army had arrived.

[Matthews, Interwoven, 42.]

Buffalo Camp on the Plains
From the book, A Texas Frontier, by Ty Cashion

...Clear Fork rancher Emmett Roberts claimed that Union soldiers did little to stop Comanche and Kiowa depredations. On several occasions, in fact, warriors approached the fort itself, once venturing as close as two hundred yards. Even several years later, a Griffin commander reported that a war party had taken stock within a mile of the guardhouse, admitting also that afterward they "cleaned the valley of the Clear Fork and left for the Plains."

As Roberts suggested, small bands of Comanche and Kiowa raiders continued their minatory thrusts into the Clear Fork country. And, as before, contests between herder folk and their adversaries remained few, short, and about equal. When some cow hunters in 1869 ran twenty horseless Indians into a depression, the two sides exchanged fire; on this occasion, the raiders forced the stockmen to withdraw.

[McConnell, West Texas Frontier II , no. 645]

More fatal was an encounter near Picketville that same year. Some herders who happened upon six Comanches slaughtering a cow gave chase, cornering one of the Indians in a ravine. The brief siege ended when a knife-wielding stockman charged and killed the warrior, but not before two of the Clear Fork men fell wounded-one fatally.

[McConnell, West Texas Frontier II , no. 649]

About the same time, in the southern part of Stephens County, several Indians surprised some teamsters after their army escort abandoned them to hunt deer. The freighters bolted from the wagon and luckily escaped across a divide. Fourteen-year-old George Bishop was not as fortunate. East of Picketville, some marauders suddenly appeared, forcing him and his horse into a fallen tree. They dragged Bishop into a thicket, stuffed grass into his mouth to prevent him from calling for help, and then riddled him with arrows.

[McConnell, West Texas Frontier II , no. 653, 687]

Although home-bound pioneers had long known that moonlit nights were a particularly perilous time, cow hunters on the range could never predict when warriors might suddenly strike. Constant vigilance provided the only assurance of securing their persons and property. Routinely they hobbled their horses in different locations around camp to cut the chances of losing them all. Cow hunters never left or entered camp during the daytime, and seldom did they even remain in one location long enough to carve a path from their camps to the range. Men normally joined their herds early in the morning and did not return until after sunset, "no matter how tired we were," Roberts noted, "so that the Indians watching us could not follow." One outfit, he recalled, hid their camp so well that a raiding party almost ran a herd of horses right over the sleeping men, not realizing they were there.

[Roberts, "Frontier Experiences," 48-50, 53; Reynolds interview.]

In part because the cow hunters were so cautious, Indians seized any advantage that chance allowed. One moonlit evening in July 1872, John Hittson and eleven others were camped near present-day Ballinger. Someone awoke to discover that Indians had spirited away many of their mounts. Gathering their few remaining horses, the men headed for their headquarters, just below Shackelford County. Before noon the next day, about seventy-five Comanches attacked the herders after feigning to offer a truce. Except for the cook, who fled for his life, the party took cover behind the chuck wagon, where they resisted a day-long siege punctuated by the desperate charges of screaming warriors. Only with nightfall did the men manage to escape.

[Marshall L. Johnson, Trail Blazing: A True Story of the Struggles with Hostile Indians on the Frontier of Texas , 78-86.]

The casualties suffered by each side attested to the reluctance of* both stockmen and Indians to engage each other in pitched battles. Despite escaping with their lives, one of the herders eventually died from his wounds. The dozen or so dead and wounded warriors bought their comrades neither territory nor stock.

...B.W. Reynolds moved his wife and children to a river bend about a mile above the post because he felt that his family would be safe there. When Captain Wirt Davis toured the Clear Fork country in 1869, attempting to organize a local defense, he noted that eight or ten families still resided at Fort Davis; twelve more comprised the community of Picketville; and, eight miles west, another tiny settlement, Sand Creek, had arisen.

...By 1870, families who had persisted against the elements, Indians, and rustlers had reaped a tremendous windfall. First-comers typically reported a fivefold growth in personal wealth over the decade; no doubt they based the price of their still underreported holdings on the Texas price of beef. Matthews admitted to twenty-five thousand dollars in personal property. Even at four dollars a head this translated to 6,250 animals. Valuated at the northern Great Plains rates, his holdings had increased more than thirty times since the war began. Perhaps the ranchers themselves did not know their true net worth; between the free-running animals and wide-ranging thieves, an accurate count proved difficult. The prolific growth of the herds, however, was beyond doubt. The men at Camp Cooper, for example, who in 1865 had suffered the Indian attack that claimed the life of Freeman Ward, were reportedly tending 25,000 animals.

[U.S. Census, 1860, Buchanan, Shackelford, and Throckmorton counties; U.S. Census, 1870 , Shackelford and Stephens counties; Adams, "Economic Development," 170; Cox, Cattle Industry of Texas II , 313; Dale, Range Cattle Industry, 28-30.]

Despite accumulating small fortunes, ranching families continued to live simple, austere lives in the postwar period. Even with their operations growing to meet the size of their herds, and with others beginning to crowd them, few cattlemen bothered to purchase the land on which their livestock grazed. This de facto subsidy kept their capital outlays low. The Clear Fork's largest landholder possessed only $2,250 worth of real estate in 1870-twice as much as the second largest holder. Unlike the nouveau riche in other regions during the Gilded Age, herding folk did not build palatial mansions to herald their new-found prominence.

[U.S. Census, 1870 , Shackelford and Stephens counties.]

Beginning in 1866, the Texas Legislature required cattlemen to file bills of sale and register brands at their courthouses before trailing a herd to market. Then, in 1871, Governor E.J. Davis appointed agents in every county to regulate passing herds. Rustlers naturally found the system disruptive, but even cattlemen, upon finding that many inspectors were dishonest, became inimical to this practice and resisted the state's efforts. Owners normally agreed by mutual consent to keep brand records and settle accounts after driving cattle to market. Left to their own word, however, many hedged. Some even evaded men to whom they were indebted. Even though cattle inspectors recorded the "tallies," obligations expired after two years, and many unfortunate cattlemen went unpaid.

[Gammet, ed., Laws of Texas V , 1141-1143; VI, 1014-23; Richardson, Frontier of Northwest Texas , 262-63; Roberts, "Frontier Experiences," 51-52; Cox, Cattle Industry of Texas II , 379; J. Marvin Hunter, comp. And ed., The Trail Drivers of Texas II , 704; Haley, Goodnight , 111.]

...Barbed wire, windmills, and scientific management facilitated the boom of the early 1880s. Although grangers and small stock raisers occupied some land along the watercourses, the vast empty spaces between the streams had little utility for small operators. Large ranchers, however, acquired or leased the expansive tracts and drilled wells at costs that others found prohibitive. Fences and tanks enabled them to begin improving their stock. In 1885 a Washington official wrote a rancher, inquiring whether progress was being made toward introducing "high-bred bulls." The stockman responded: "There are but few, very few, of the old long-horn Texans in the State." Cattlemen had indeed begun specializing in all sorts of breeds. A ranch might have nothing but Durhams, like the one on Foyle Creek that "Colonel" Godwin bought from James A. Brock. Others raised Holsteins, Devons, Brahmas, and other breeds. Albany, in fact, became known as "Home of the Hereford."

[D.W. Hinkle to Joseph Nimmo, Jr., Mar. 21, 1885, in Nimmo, Range and Ranch Cattle Business , 144; Dale, Range Cattle Industry , 119-22; Frontier Echo , Aug. 6, 1879.]

...The furiously paced economic expansion continued until 1885, when conditions abruptly reversed. Texas cattle that sold in 1880 for seven dollars a head, sold for eleven dollars in 1881, sixteen dollars in 1882, and twenty-five dollars in 1883. In 1884 the market reached a plateau. Prices then plummeted, bottoming out at three dollars a head in 1885, as the first of many "die-ups" prompted stock raisers to dump their starving animals on an already glutted market. "For nine miserable years," remarked old-time chronicler Don Biggers, "it seemed that every power on Heaven and earth but turned against the cowman." The first misfortune was a series of blizzards that swept the overstocked and underwatered land. In many places cattle drifted southward until reaching the fence lines, where they piled up in a frozen mass, forming a bridge for others to walk over. When the weakened and thirsty survivors reached the rivers, they plunged into the water but could not reach the bank. Biggers commented that the Pecos in the spring of 1885 was "a revolting mess of carrion and ruin," and everywhere the country was "full of bleating, starving, motherless calves." As bad as the die-up of 1884 had been, it paled in comparison to the one that occurred during the drought of 1885-86. From the Canadian border to the Rio Grande, carcasses covered the Great Plains.

[Dale, Range Cattle Industry , 122, 125; Biggers, Buffalo Guns and Barbed Wire , 123-25, 147.]

...For twenty-three months-from June 1885 to April 1887-the sky grew stingier than anyone could remember. Ranchers, even though suffering terribly, at least found solace in seeing the range thinned of unwelcomed competitors and grangers.

...A New Yorker who visited Northwest Texas in the autumn of 1886 claimed to have counted forty-five eastbound wagons passing through Jacksboro in a single day.

[For two particularly good studies on the drought, see J.W. Williams,"A Statistical Study of the Drouth of 1885," WTHAY 21 (1945): 85-109; and W.C. Holden, "West Texas Droughts," SWHQ 32 (Oct. 1928): 103-23; Michael Thomas Kingston, ed., Texas Almanac and State Industrial Guide, 1984-85 , 345; Peter Hart, A Description of Shackelford County, State of Texas, U.S.A. , pamphlet, cited in Skaggs, Cattle-Trailing Industry , 95; Albany News, Oct. 21, 1886.]

...For over a hundred days during the growing season of 1886, Shackelford County saw nothing more than an occasional sprinkle. After a late autumn rain answered their prayers, thankful citizens offered assistance to farmers in Haskell County. At first their prideful neighbors refused relief, but two weeks later the beleaguered grangers met and declared that any act of kindness would be humbly accepted. At Hulltown, near old Mugginsville, a man wryly commented that unless it rained soon the twenty-odd members of the local Farmers Alliance might be expelled, "As none can claim to be farmers."

...Like others before them, hopeful West Texans would pour into this inviting land only to realize too late its fickle nature. The successors of Jesse Stem, Newton C. Givens, James A. Brock, and a parade of long-forgotten pioneering men and women would reap the bittersweet legacy of conquest from the alternately generous and miserly land. Through cycles of bountiful cotton harvests and plagues of boll weevils, through "gushers" and "dusters" during oil booms and busts, and through wet years and dry ones, others would come and write similar chapters of great successes and abysmal failures. Many others would come with smaller hopes and aspirations and quietly accept what the land would yield.

Confederate Clear Fork

Ty Cashion's map and observations from the book, A Texas Frontier.