Did You Know 3?

 Did you Know? The original county seat of Hardeman County, Texas was Margaret. However in the mid-1880's, the Fort Worth and Denver Railway surveyed the area, and discovered that the town of Margaret was across the Pease River and away from where they wanted their rail lines to run. The rail road officials subsequently laid out the town of Quanah, named after Comache Chief, Quanah Parker. A special election was called, but before the vote, it was established that one could become a resident residency simply by having their laundry done in any Hardeman County town for six weeks. Amazingly, the railroad crews all became voting citizens just in time to vote Quanah as the new county seat! [Photo - Chief Quanah Parker visits Quanah on July 4, 1896. The Fort Worth and Denver Railway station is at the left.]

 

Did you Know? HideTown was a bufflo hunter's trading post in present day Wheeler County, Texas. The town was originally named for the fact that residents used buffalo hides to construct their dwellings. Later, the town camed to be called, Sweetwater. In 1876, Sweetwater was home to the infamous Sweetwater Shoot-out in which Bat Masterson shot and killed Sgt. Melvin King after King had killed local prairie nymph, Mollie Brennan. After the town applied for a Post Office in 1879, it learned the name Sweetwater was already being used in Nolan County, Texas. Legend holds that the town fathers dispatched a rider to nearby Fort Elliot (located at the time in the Eastern Panhandle of Texas) to find out an Indian word that meant Sweet Water. A Cheyenne scout supposedly offered up Mobeetie as the translation. Some insisted at the time that the Cheyenne had the last laugh on the "Buffalo Hunters" and their town as Mobeetie actually meant Buffalo Dung!

 

Mike Kearby's Texas Copyright 2011