Carole Sikes Artist / Writer in Austin, Texas

WHAT DO YOU KNOW about Borger, Texas ? The town of Borger was a significant oil boomtown in the twentieth century but greed got it off to a very wrong start. It is located in the panhandle of Texas which became a leading area for the production of oil. In 1920, Amarillo was the largest panhandle town with a population of 15,494. Borger had more four footed inhabitants than two footed, but this did not deter two brothers from Missouri buying 2140 acres of land for $12,000. They posted sensational advertisements for finding black gold in the new town on the plains suddenly making it the 6th largest town in Texas. Forty five thousand men and women had arrived._____________________ Asa Phillip Borger, one of the brothers had his vision for the Borger Townsite Company. “Ace” brought a lawyer to be his trouble shooter. “Two Gun” Dick Herwig, a convicted murderer, bought his way out of prison to become Borger’s Marshall. Illegal distilleries supplied rot gut whiskey for Ace’s saloons, open

WHAT DO YOU KNOW about Spindletop? Spindletop was the first successful oil well in Texas located atop a minimal mound near Beaumont in the Gulf coastal area. Research and reference for this story is the comprehensive history of Texas written by Stephen Harrigan. ______________________________________________ I quote, “Oil was never discovered in Texas; it was just always there. It was the scum that the surviving members of the DeSoto and Moscoso expedition had found seeping up out of the Texas surf in 1543 and then used to seal gaps in their leaky handmade rafts…” Native Americans used it as a salve and a lubricant and to patch their canoes. Anglo settlers found petroleum blobs in ponds between the Brazos and Sabine Rivers and called them “sour lakes” because of the gaseous smell._____________ In 1859, the oil industry was founded in Pennsylvania. Crude oil was refined into kerosene and used mainly for lighting. Texas followed with an oil industry of energy prominence. However the

WHAT DO YOU KNOW about the XIT Ranch? Because Texas had been a republic prior to statehood, it owned its land that was abundant especially in the relatively unpopulated western areas. The first primitive capitol building was destroyed by fire. So in 1882, the State Legislature appropriated three million acres of state land in the panhandle of Texas to finance a new capitol. Mathias Schnell of Rock Island, Illinois formed the Capitol Syndicate (*) of wealthy investors from Chicago to London to purchase the vast amount of undeveloped range land. Many never intended to be ranchers but that is what they became.__________ It was U.S. investor, Col. Amos C. Babcock’s party that went to survey the property on the border of New Mexico. At Fort Elliott he was given a four mule ambulance, a wagon to haul camping equipment and a small tent. With him was his surveyor, a county clerk, several cowboys and a Mexican cook. They traveled 950 miles and it took 36 days to inspect the land. Babcoc

WHAT DO YOU KNOW about the King Ranch? Cattle comes to mind of course, but so much else! It is one of the largest privately held corporations in the U.S. It covers 1,300 square miles and six south Texas counties. It has world-wide cattle operations; owns more than 50,000 acres of timberland; operates hundreds of oil and gas wells; is a major player in agribusiness, cotton, pecans, leather, farm equipment, Ford’s King Ranch truck, etc. Quarter horses are raised and raced. Assault won the Triple Crown in 1946 and in 1950 Middle Ground won the Derby and Belmont.________________ Richard King came to the coast of Texas from Pennsylvania. He and his friend Mifflin Kenedy started as traders, then dominated commerce in south Texas by shipping goods in their steamboats. Eventually both became ranchers. In 1852, King started a cattle camp on Santa Gertrudis Creek in South Texas. He bought several land grants to which he added acreage that became home to 100 men, woman and children from Mexico kn

WHAT DO YOU KNOW about Quanah Parker? Quanah Parker was one of a kind. The son of a Comanche war chief and a white woman, he grew to become a man of two worlds.___________________ On a day when the tribesmen and boys were out hunting, their village was raided by Texas Rangers. Only the women and a few braves were there and most were killed except Quanah’s mother who fled on horseback with her infant daughter. However she was chased, captured, and identified as a white woman named Cynthia Ann Parker. She was returned to a white settlement where Parker relations lived. It is believed that Peta Nocona, Quanah’s father, lived another 3 or 4 years before his two sons became orphans.___________________ The vast area called Comancheria had an eastern boundary through Austin and Llano north to the Red River. It included all of the Panhandle of Texas and the south plains to approximately Interstate 10. Before 1860, it was half of Texas plus parts of New Mexico and Oklahoma. Quana

WHAT DO YOU KNOW about Cynthia Ann Parker? PERHAPS you have heard her tale. She was abducted twice. First when nine years old, she was taken by a Comanche band that had raided her parents’ ranch near Ft. Parker and bludgeoned her father to death in 1836. Thirty-three years later, Texas Rangers rescued the blue eyed squaw and her infant daughter but it was actually a second abduction. She had completely assimilated into life in the tribe. Later a son named Quanah would become a chief but that is another story for later. ____________________ The U. S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Texas had attempted to establish reserves where Native Americans could live and farm protected from aggressive white men and Indian fighters but it was complicated. Hatred existed between the lawless white men believing they were entitled to raw land in the new territory and the bands of Comanche who refused life on a reservation preferring the wild open plains. Some of the other tribes were aligned with Te

WHAT DO YOU KNOW about Cynthia Ann Parker? PERHAPS you have heard her tale. She was abducted twice. First when nine years old, she was taken by a Comanche band that had raided her parents’ ranch near Ft. Parker and bludgeoned her father to death in 1836. Thirty-three years later, Texas Rangers rescued the blue eyed squaw and her infant daughter but it was actually a second abduction. She had completely assimilated into life in the tribe. Later a son named Quanah would become a chief but that is another story for later._______________________________ The U. S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Texas had attempted to establish reserves where Native Americans could live and farm protected from aggressive white men and Indian fighters but it was complicated. Hatred existed between the lawless white men believing they were entitled to raw land in the new territory and the bands of Comanche who refused life on a reservation preferring the wild open plains. Some of the other tribes were alig

In my WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT Indians in Texas: I intended to say The Karankawa fishermen were reputed to be cannibalistic... Thanks to Eilene for catching it. My apology for this and once again for not being able to maintain the paragraphing in my orginally typed stories when I cut and paste them to this blog. If anyone more tech savvy than I can enlighten me, please do. Thanks Carole

I will attempt to use tribal names when possible. I ask for your understanding when space begs that I use the briefer reference of Indians rather than the more proper Native Americans. The western plains of Texas were rich hunting grounds for the Comanche, Apache and Kiowa tribal bands seeking the herds of bison. Hunting was fiercely competitive and ceremonial. The warrior chiefs wore their elaborate feathered head-dresses to hunt. Some chiefs had dozens of wives doing domestic work. Buffalo meat was hung, dried and soup was made. Butchering was done by women who also stretched hides on large frames to cover tepees and make blankets that were stacked for beds on which the men lounged and the children slept. The women in charge were distinguished by the clothing they wore. They often wore a blanket over their deerskin dresses and were adorned with handmade jewelry. Horses had been brought and left in the new world by the failed Spanish explorers looking for gold and the returni

WHAT DO YOU KNOW about Castroville, Texas In 1844, a ship of mostly farmers landed on the Gulf Coast of Texas to travel overland, past San Antonio, upstream on the Medina River. Two deer, three bears and one alligator were killed before reaching Henri Castro’s land grant from the Republic of Texas. The 36 future Texas colonists from Alsace-Lorraine, a territory of France, were led by Captain John C. Hays and his Texas Rangers to what would become called “Little Alsace.”________ For the next five years the settlers endured Comanche raids, a drought, invasion of locusts and a Cholera epidemic.(*) The town was patterned after a European village. The very un-Texan houses were on small lots and narrow lanes, usually two stories tall, made of timber and rough cut stone that was plastered, with thatched roofs. Surrounding the houses were individual farming plots.________ The first church in Castroville and also the first in the county of Medina was St. Louis Catholic Church. Fin