Boot Hill Arch - Tascosa, TX
Posted by: 
YoSam.
N 35° 31.851 W 102° 15.784
13S E 748156 N 3935360
Once a roudy town and county seat, of a lawless land, now Cal Farley's Boys Ranch
Waymark Code: WMKJF9
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 04/21/2014
Views: 4
County of arch: Oldham County
Location of arch: E. of US 365, Old Tascosa town site
A little history:
"Along with law-abiding and God-fearing men and women were buried here, often without benefit of clergy, men who "died with their boots on". The name was borrowed from a cemetery in Dodge City, Kansas, while it was a resort of buffalo hunters and trail drivers. Old Tascosa, cowboy capital of the plains, lay one-half mile northeast of Boothill Cemetery. In its brief span it became the center of the open-range world. Stamping ground for some of the West's most notorious bad men and focal point for cattle thieves and ranchmen. Because of the easy crossing of the Canadian River at the site, it early became a meeting place where Indians and Mexican traders (comancheros) exchanged contraband goods, including women and children.
"With the passing of the buffalo came the first permanent settlement, made by Mexican sheepherders in 1876. Charles Goodnight and Thomas S. Bugbee brought the first cattle to the free-grass empire the same year. Smaller ranchmen and nesters followed and the boom was on." ~ Texas Historical Commission
Hundreds of miles from the general line of settlement, Tascosa lured the lawless and the lawmen: Billy the Kids and Pat Garretts. To accommodate those who died with their boots on in growing gunfights. A cemetery was set aside in 1879. It was named for the famed 'Boot Hill' in Dodge City, Kansas, to which Tascosa was tied by cattle and freight trail. Heaviest toll in a single shoot out occurred March 21, 1886, when three cowboys and a restaurant owner died in a five-minute duel. All went to Boot Hill. The cattle trails, Tascosa's lifeblood, began to be pinched off with the coming of barbed wire, first commercial use of which was drawn still tighter when the vast XIT spread fenced its 3 million acres. By 1887 Tascosa was completely closed in. When the railroad bypassed it the same year, its fate was sealed. By the time the Oldham County seat was moved to Vega in 1915, only 15 residents remained. Sole remnants of the old town today are Boot Hill and the stone courthouse. The site, however, is occupied by Cal Farley's Boys Ranch.