Oldham County, Texas - People-Named Places on Waymarking.com

Location of this waymark (gps above) is courthouse in Vega

The original marker used here was originally erected in 1936 in a rest area (where I found it - N 35° 32.063 W 102° 15.977) but has since been moved, along with four other markers, to the entrance to Cal Farley's Bous Ranch (N 35° 32.063 W 102° 15.977). This Ranch occupies the site of the first county seat and a rough town of Tascosa

County of marker: Oldham County
Location of marker: US 285 & CR 233, Tascosa = N 35° 32.066 W 102° 15.988
1 mile N. of Canadian River, 10 miles S. of Channing, 25 miles N. of Vega
Marker erected by: Texas Highway Department in 1936
Marker text:

Second marker on courthouse lawn:
Marker erected by The State of Texas in 1963
Located at: N. Main St. (US 285) & E. Main St., Vega - N 35° 14.818 W 102° 25.680
Marker text:

The Person:
OLDHAM, WILLIAMSON SIMPSON (1813–1868). Williamson Simpson Oldham, Confederate legislator, was born in Franklin County, Tennessee, on July 19, 1813, the son of Elias and Mary (Burton) Oldham. As the son of a poor farmer, Oldham was largely self-educated, but at the age of eighteen he opened a school in the Tennessee hills. He subsequently read law and was admitted to the bar in Tennessee in 1836. Soon afterward he moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he prospered in the practice of law and in politics. On December 12, 1837, he married Mary Vance McKissick, the daughter of the wealthy James McKissick; the couple had five children. Mary died, and on December 26, 1850, Oldham married Mrs. Anne S. Kirk. After her death he married Agnes Harper, on November 19, 1857. In 1838 he was elected to the General Assembly, the Arkansas House of Representatives, from Washington County, and in 1842 he became speaker. In 1844 he was appointed associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court, where he served until 1848. He ran unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives in 1846 and was defeated in a senatorial race against R. W. Johnson in 1848. Suffering from a mild case of tuberculosis and hoping to repair his political fortunes, Oldham moved to Austin, Texas, in 1849. In 1852 he was president of the Austin Railroad Association. From 1854 until 1857 he served as an editor of the Austin State Gazette. He ran for the Texas House of Representatives in 1853 and for Congress in 1859, without success. He moved to Brenham in 1859 and in 1861 was elected to the Secession Convention. That body sent him to Arkansas to encourage that state's secession and appointed him a member of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America. The following November the Texas Senate elected him to the regular Confederate Senate, a position he held until the collapse of the Confederacy. Oldham chaired the Committee on Post Offices in both regular congresses and the Committee on Commerce in the Second. He served on the Indian Affairs, Naval Affairs, Finance, Judiciary, and Joint committees. As a firm believer in states' rights, he was fearful of what he called the "battering ram of executive influence" and the claim of "military necessity" as prejudicial to democratic principles. He opposed the building of a navy, the conscription of civilians, and centralized control of the economy, all features of a too-powerful central government. When state sovereignty was not a question, however, Oldham supported the Jefferson Davis administration by favoring high taxes and heroic methods of countering the rampant Confederate inflation. He was also an advocate of the arming of slaves for Confederate military service. Like other members of the Texas delegation, he argued forcibly for stronger defensive measures for the Texas frontier and protested many of the apparently arbitrary actions of the Confederate Cotton Bureau. With the end of the war, Oldham became an expatriate. He lived for a time in Mexico and then moved to Canada, where he learned photography and began a book about the Confederacy. Part of this manuscript, which he apparently never finished, was serialized after his death in De Bow's Monthly Review (1869–70) under the title "Last Days of the Confederacy." A longer version is in Oldham's papers at the Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin, where his manuscript Memoirs of a Confederate Senator is also housed. Oldham returned to Texas in 1866 to make his home in Houston. He died of typhoid fever on May 8, 1868, and was buried in the Masonic Cemetery, Houston. In 1938 his remains were moved to Masonic Cemetery in Eagle Lake. Oldham County in the Panhandle is named in his honor." ~ Texas State Historical Association online

The County:
"OLDHAM COUNTY. Oldham County is in the northwestern corner of the Panhandle, bordered on the west by New Mexico, on the north by Hartley County, on the east by Potter County, and on the south by Deaf Smith County. The county's geographic center lies at 35°25' north latitude and 102°35' west longitude; Vega, the seat of government, is thirty miles west of Amarillo. The area was named for Williamson Simpson Oldham, pioneer Texas lawyer and Confederate senator. Oldham County comprises 1,485 square miles of relatively level grassland, broken by the Canadian River and its numerous intermittent tributaries; elevations range from 3,200 to 4,200 feet above sea level. The fine sandy loam and caliche soils in the area support a variety of native grasses as well as mesquiteqv, sage, and shin oaks. Larger trees such as elm, hackberry, cottonwood, and oak grow in the river bottoms in some places. The soils are not generally conducive to farming, so the economy of the county is principally based on ranching. The area receives an average of 19.54 inches of rain per year. Temperatures range from an average minimum temperature of 22° F in January to an average maximum of 92° F in July; the annual growing season lasts 186 days.

Oldham County's history has revolved around the Canadian River, which runs in an east–west direction across the northern part of the county. Archeological investigations, beginning with the 1932 excavations of Saddleback Mesa, have unearthed evidence of the Panhandle Pueblo culture. Petroglyphs and other artifacts attest to the presence of other pre-Columbian peoples. Plains Apaches, followed by the warlike Comanches and Kiowas, found refuge in the breaks of the Canadian. Various Spanish entradas utilized the river as they traveled eastward from New Mexico. Probably both the expedition of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado (1541–44) and the Oñate expedition of 1601 crossed the area. It is fairly certain that Pedro Vial passed through in 1786 and 1788. The Facundo Melgares party came through the county as it searched for Zebulon M. Pike in 1806. Likewise, the ciboleros and Comancherosqqv from northern New Mexico all used the Canadian as a major trade route; indeed, the Atascosa Springs area was a frequent trading ground for Comancheros and their Indian customers. Stephen H. Long, Josiah Gregg, James W. Abert, Randolph B. Marcy, and W. W. Whipple led their pathfinding expeditions along the Canadian valley through the area during the early nineteenth century. Buffalo hunters established temporary camps in the area in the 1870s, and they were soon joined by ranchers and pastores. In 1876 the Texas legislature established Oldham County from the huge original Bexar County, and the county was organized in 1880, with Tascosa as the county seat. Caleb B. (Cape) Willinghamqv became the first sheriff, C. B. Vivian was elected county clerk, and William S. Mabry was made county surveyor. Sixteen unorganized Panhandle counties were attached to Oldham County for administrative purposes. A population of 287 in 1880 made the county the second most populous of the Panhandle area; only Wheeler County, on the east side of the Panhandle, had more residents. The ranching industry of Oldham County began very soon after the Red River War of 1874–75 forced the Comanches and other Plains nomads onto reservations in Indian Territory. Soon after the Indian removal, Casimiro Romeroqv and his fellow pastores from New Mexico established sheep ranches, dotted with stone and adobe plazas, throughout the area, along the Canadian River and its tributaries. As a result Mexican-American settlers outnumbered Anglo-Americans for some time. The situation began to change in 1877, when George W. Littlefield started his LIT Ranchqqv just east of Tascosa. Between 1879 and 1881 W. M. D. Leeqv and his partners bought out many of the pastores and established the LE and LS ranches,qqv supplanting the sheep with cattle. In 1882 the Capitol Syndicate marked off a large amount of Oldham County lands for use in its famous XIT Ranch. Only the southeastern part of the county fell outside the XIT after that time. Following a certain amount of property exchanging and dislocation within the local ranching industry, other ranches (the LX and the Frying Pan,qqv for instance) occupied Oldham County acreage.

Tascosa, originally called Plaza Atascosa, was an Oldham County village by 1875. As one of only three towns in the Panhandle, it developed a reputation as a rowdy and sometimes violent cowtown. When it became the county seat in 1880, its position as a leading early Panhandle town was strengthened. For decades Tascosa continued to serve as a small trade and administrative center. In 1887 the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway, building from Amarillo to Colorado, crossed the northeastern corner of the county, passing within two miles of Tascosa. Another village, "new" Tascosa, popped up on the road less than two miles from the old site. By 1890 the county had five ranches, more than 30,000 cattle, and 270 residents. Oldham County entered the twentieth century as a ranching area supporting 349 residents and only slightly influenced by the railroads crossing it. By 1900 it had twenty-three ranches, encompassing 578,246 acres; the agricultural census reported 30,226 cattle, but no crops, in the county that year. Crop farmers began to move into the area after 1904, when the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railway laid tracks through the southern part of the county for a line connecting Amarillo to Tucumcari, New Mexico. The new railroad encouraged additional settlement, and a small number of wheat farms were established along the Rock Island right-of-way between 1900 and 1910; the towns of Adrian, Vega, and Wildorado also sprang up along the route. By 1910 Oldham County had eighty-seven farms and ranches and a population of 812. About 1,400 acres were planted in wheat that year, along with fifty acres in corn and 693 acres in sorghum. The economy remained essentially dependent on ranching, however, and 25,000 cattle were reported. As the county developed Tascosa slowly lost population and influence to Vega. By 1915, when a special election moved the county seat to Vega, only fifteen people lived in Tascosa. The county as a whole also lost population during the 1910s, although cropland expanded during that decade. Though only 709 people lived in the county by 1920, more than 7,000 acres were planted in wheat, the county's most important crop; another 65 acres were planted in corn, 1,674 acres in sorghum, and 27 acres in cotton. The area experienced a tremendous expansion of wheat farming during the 1920s; 21,000 acres were planted in wheat by 1925, and 57,000 by 1930. In all, 69,000 acres of crops were harvested in Oldham County that year. The number of farms and ranches rose from 86 to 137 between 1920 and 1930. The population almost doubled during the same period, rising to 1,404 by 1930. A major national highway built through the area in the early 1920s, when U.S. Highway 66 was extended from Amarillo to Tucumcari. The expansion of wheat farming continued during the 1930s during the Great Depression. By 1940, 67,000 acres in the county were planted in wheat. Cattle ranching also expanded significantly during this period; while there were never more than 25,000 cattle reported between 1910 and 1930, by 1940 there were 60,000. The number of farms and ranches also rose by 1940 to 177. Nevertheless, the county lost population during the depression; by 1940 only 1,385 people lived in the area. The town of Tascosa, which had been declining for years, was deserted by 1939, but in June of that year Cal Farley acquired the site, tore down most of the crumbling buildings, and built his Maverick Boys Ranch on the site. By 1950 the county's population had increased to 1,627.

Though oil was discovered in the Oldham County in 1957, significant amounts were not produced there until the early 1970s. County lands yielded 263,000 barrels of oil in 1974, 242,000 barrels in 1978, and 1,558,000 barrels in 1982. Production dropped off in the mid-1980s, in 1990, 325,000 barrels of crude were produced. In 2000, 88,479 barrels of oil and 276,917,000 cubic feet of natural gas were produced in the county. By January 1, 2001, 13,420,373 barrels of oil had been taken from county lands since discovery in 1957. In the early 1980s 97 percent of the county's land was in farms and ranches, and 15 percent of the land was cultivated. In 1980 Oldham County produced $5 million worth of farm crops and $18 million worth of beef cattle; thus 80 percent of the county's agricultural production derived from cattle raising. In 2002 the county had 136 farms and ranches covering 936,390 acres, 86 percent of which were devoted to pasture and 13 percent to crops. In that year farmers and ranchers in the area earned $65,949,000; livestock sales accounted for $63,619,000 of the total. Beef cattle were the county's chief agricultural product; crops included wheat and grain sorghum. Both Interstate Highway 40, which replaced old Route 66 in the 1960s, and U.S. Highway 385 also attracted some dollars to the area.

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