Talk:Oldham County, Texas

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Dramatic history of Oldham County is missing[edit]

Currently (August 2018) the article says nothing about the territory of Oldham County before it was formally incorporated. There were huge herds of buffalo (American Bison) above and below the steep Caprock cliffs that divides Oldham County along an east-to-west line. From 1849, for the California Gold Rush, the California Road for gold-seekers passed through Oldham County along the south side of the Canadian River. This was Comanche Indian country (in the heartland of the Comancheria), extremely dangerous for Europeans, until the late 1870's. The nomadic Comanches were the most effective and feared horse-mounted warriors in the West. The area was under the Comanches' military "sovereignty" until they were finally forcibly subdued in the Red River War and transported to the area of Lawton, Oklahoma, well after all the other defeated indian (native American) tribes in the United States. The wild, flat and unexplored Llano Estacado, which starts south at present-day Vega, was the last area of the United States to be conquered militarily. Tascosa, later the first Oldham County seat, was the largest (practically the only) town in the Texas panhandle and the main trading post in Texas for the Santa Fe trade in buffalo hides. The Hispanic "comancheros" traded there with the Commanches, and others herded sheep along the Canadian River long before the cattle ranchers came.

Also, the article neglects to describe the dramatic political fight over moving the county seat from Tascosa to Vega. The Tascosa landowners and ranchers were vigorously opposed, and tried all kinds of tricks to block it, which succeeded in a couple of the elections.

Tascosa was ruined by the location of the railroad too far away. The Tascosa Pioneer wrote in 1890: "Truly this is a world which has no regard for the established order of things but knocks them sky west and crooked, and lo, the upstart hath the land and its fatness."[1]70.112.90.106 (talk) 22:21, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

But the pro-Vega forces fought back with tricks of their own, including offering free city lots in Vega as bribes to voters to vote for Vega against Tascosa. Some people live on "bribery lots" in Vega today. 2605:6000:ED08:B300:D11F:C10E:F54:4BD2 (talk) 21:52, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ The Tascosa Pioneer, October 11, 1890, quoted in Lester Fields Sheffy, The Life and Times of Timothy Dwight Hobart, 1855–1935: Colonization of West Texas (Canyon, Texas: Panhandle-Plains Historical Society, 1950), p. 156
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