San Angelo -- San Angelo TX - American Guide Series on Waymarking.com

The waymark coordinates are for the then brand-new (now former) San Angelo City Hall in downtown San Angelo TX. The building is used today as an annex for the modern City Hall a few blocks away.

WPA writers must have heard a lot of great stories of San Angelo on the frontier. It must have been hard to choose, but the story the chose of the Fighting Parson is a doozy!

From Texas: A Guide to the Lone Star State:

"SAN ANGELO, 259 m. (1,847 alt., 25,308 pop.), is one of the largest primary wool markets in America. Many cattle are also shipped, and the industrial plants produce cottonseed, dairy and petroleum products, sheet metal, stoves and saddlery. Modern business structures house the offices of oil companies, and of cotton, wool, mohair and cattlebuyers, as well as cosmopolitan shops and stores. From the extensive business district, on all sides extend residential areas of wide tree-bordered streets. A plentiful water supply keeps fresh the greenery of parkways, lawns and gardens.

San Angelo owes its birth to the army, for it was the establishment of Camp Concho, on the height of ground between the North and Middle [Page 473] Concho Rivers, that led to the building of a settlement across the North Concho. First known only as Over-the-River, and not to be compared with the already established town of Ben Ficklin, approximately three miles downstream and then an important stage station, the village subsisted on the patronage of soldiers. In 1882 a flood wiped out Ben Ficklin and, instead of rebuilding, survivors of the wrecked town moved upstream and Over-the-River became Santa Angela, named by one of its founders, Bartholomew De Witt, for his sister-in-law, a nun of the Ursuline Convent at San Antonio. Later the name was changed to the masculine form of San Angelo.

The Goodnight-Loving Cattle Trail, the Chidester Stage Line, and the California Trail passed through the present site of San Angelo. The city's history is rife with stories of the wild behavior of cowboys, soldiers, trail drivers, and freighters. Famous pioneer characters were Smoky Joe, Jake Golden, Monte Bill, Mystic Maud, and, most picturesque of all, the Fighting Parson. He nightly, with Bible in one hand and revolver in the other, entered one or another of the gambling establishments, walked to the nearest faro table his usual choice for an impromptu pulpit and announced that he had come to preach. He would then lay down the book and the six-shooter and address his congregation. Only once did anyone object to the procedure. The Parson rapped the objector over the head with the barrel of his gun and laid him in the sawdust before the bar, where, at the end of the service, he still reposed.

Cattle were all-important in the old days, but sheep and goats soon found their place on the ranges, while still later cotton and oil added wealth to the community. The railroad came in 1888, and from that time San Angelo has been the shipping and supply center of a wide area."

Book: Texas Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 472-473 Year Originally Published: 1940

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Date Logged Log User Rating   12/27/2016 Benchmark Blasterz visited it