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Wichita Falls Times
1882
Challenge of the
Wichita Falls townsite opened in 1882
John Gould wrote a regular daily and the townsite was opened for was later built all the way across
column for the Wichita Falls Times sale. Organization of Wichita western Oklahoma the South-
and also wrote for other publica- County soon followed. em was eventually built to Dub-
tions. This article he in 1953 General Greenville Dodge, Texas. The freight from these
Civil War veteran and builder lines became, an im-
Wichita several railroads, came the portant factor the traffic over
in 1880 the Wichita Falls
John Gould and made it a proposition to build Other
Falls a from come into being the con-
a he hoped to
years on to He later
decades the to and the Wichita Falls and
be divided, roughly, five him, bonus payments lahoma branch of the Valley, to
Petrolia and Byers and later to
The years from 1882, when the amounted to 65 percent of the Waurika, abandoned.
townsite was opened, until 1896, assessed was In 1903 oil was discovered near
when the Wichita Falls Railway, the community's the site of Petrolia, in fl^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H
the 18-mile line between this city spirit that it met those Clay County. The was a
and Henrietta now operated burdensome though they small one and attracted at-
part of the M-K-T system, was must have been. The chief factor tention among oil operators, and
built, may be described as the the undertaking Capt.J.H. the importance of its oil was soon
frontier-formative era. Barwise, to be overshadowed by that of its
The period from 1896 until ab- northern war veteran, who natural gas.
out 1914, before shallow oil began chosen Wichita Falls as .
to be a big factor in Wichita daughter had twice drawn the
economy, may be slip labeled "Wichita" out of a Falls m 1908, bemg the
scribed as the industrial develop- hat two other places' natural gas
ment and era. names. for domestic fuel.
1911 until 1927, somewhat The community came to real Wichita Falls at once
overlapping the industrial being the arrival to exploit the fact that could
velopment era. was a period road. It set about to organize a industries very cheap fuel,
which can be called that of county government, and was it- few years a motor
low oil development. self, though not without difficul- truck factory, three glass fac-
to 1937, by reason of ty, named as the county seat. A tones, a pottery plant and some
several unhappy factors, was a thousand or so settlers located lesser industries had been m-
period of recession. here, banks, lumberyards and to come here. The mvest-
From 1937 to this time, Wichi- stagelines were established and made 1896 began to bear
has experienced new the frontier settlement took on CENTENNIAL A mule team Parade last May 15. University United
growth and inciden- some of the aspects of an or- pulls a wagon in the Wichita County Centen- Methodist Church is in
to the discovery of deep ganized community. of cneap fuel
While there was a tiny settle- It grew slowly at first. Most of m operation, they were for a had wanted munities of like appeared Falls continued to
ment here m the '70s, Sept. 27, the area hereabouts was in of years very important property but was deterr- nearby. Waggoner City is be- grow after 1920. It is probable
1882 is generally accepted as the ranching properties, but farmers t his wife. She had dreamed lieved to have had a population of that its 1925 population was well
birthdate of Wichita Falls. It was began entering the region, wheat of Wichita the pro- 10,000 at one time. Scarcely a in excess of 50,000.
on that day that the Fort Worth & and cotton became fac- deveiopment was under and she refused to sign the trace of it and its boom neighbors The era which began in 1896
Denver's first tram arrived here tors, and there slow but way, a new effort be nearby remains today. and which was overlapped by the
steady development. itself ... develop it. Wichita Falls reaped an abun- era of shallow witnessed prog-
1896 something Showings of oil had been found So it was that Fowler induced a dant harvest from Burkbur- ress in Wichita Falls in ways not
something unprecedented in rail- on the of his fellow to nett boom developments. Smce it directly related to its industrial
road building, that gave Wichita ranch in 1905. some money, about had, in the preceding decade, development. growing city
Falls a new stimulus. More impressive discoveries and form a company to undertaken to modernize itself was proud of itself, possessed a
A few years after 1882 the Fort recorded in 1909. It was on farm. The well came with paved streets, a sewer sys- tremendous faith in its
Worth and Denver built north- however, that the flowing over 2,000 barrels a tem, good schools, a modem the- and it set about to do thmgs in
westward, and Wichita Falls lost as the ushering in the ater and other impro it keeping with its forward-looking
its status as a railhead. The day was brought Clay- in all its frenzied excite- offered oil operators an inviting state of mind. It constructed a
when the first tram was operated at place to live. modem theater, built a street car
to Harrold, about 35 miles north- The next two or three Derricks appeared on practic- The oil discovered at Electra, line, established a newspap-
west, long regarded of witnessed the transforma- ally every townplot in Burkbur- at Burkbumett and m Archer er, developed a big, modem resi-
the darkest in this city's early tion of Electra from a tiny In Wichita Falls, the sellers County was found principally at dence section, began to pave its
history. It seemed that practical- modem city, Wichita stock in wildcat wells, unable depths of 1,600 to 1,900 feet. Such streets took on some other
everybody was moving to Har- benefits from find office space, set up their wells were not costly to drill. A aspects of metropolitanism.
Many of them returned in oil development there. In the booths on the street, on Ohio Av- man who could raise as much as The effort to create a city
due time. Magnolia Petroleum Co.'s well until a city com- $25,000 could buy a small lease government was an abortive one.
Later in the decade the Mis- the Schmoker farm, four miles them to move. and get a well drilled for that Early in the city's history it in-
souri-Kansas and Texas com- southwest of Burkbumett, gave census had shown much money. So it was that the corporated under the state's gen-
pleted a line from Denison to community its inklings Wichita Falls to have 8,200 popu- Wichita Falls area came to be laws and a municipal gov-
Henrietta. Wichitans, realizing excitement. At about the The 1920 census, taken known as a poor man's oil field. It emment began to function. It de-
the need of a more direct rail production the boom was at its height, was developed very largely by veloped promptly that a mistake
outlet to St. Louis and the north- recorded in Archer County, showed slightly over 40,000. The small independent had been made in the choice of a
east, undertook to persuade the unimpressive at the had been intensified early While the major companies had a mayor, that post being held by a
railroad to build on to Wichita in 1919, by the brmging in of the part in the operations, a very man who took himself and his job
Falls. The was mdifferent Burk-Waggoner well, on the substantial share of the drilling too seriously. Wearying of him,
to the idea, even when a very It was in July, that oil Waggoner farm northwest of was carried on by but lacking any legal reason for
substantial bonus was offered. became a really big factor in Burkbumett and it gave drilling This meant that most of the pro- removing him from office, the
Then it was that Wichitans, Wichita Falls. That month mark- operations a new and exciting ceeds from production stayed in citizenship adopted the effective
under the leadership of J.A. ed the bringing in of the Fowler stimulus. A new community, this city and section, a fact that device of dissolving the municip-
Kemp, offered to build the 18- townsite well at Burkbumett. City, came into being has weighed very importantly in corporation. For half a dozen
mile line themselves if the Katy S.L. Fowler, owner of a farm just near the well, and two other com- Wichita Falls' development. (Continued on Page 14AA)
would operate it and give them a percentage of the earnings. The railroad, aware that it couldn't possibly lose under such an arrangement, agreed, and the line, known officially as the Wichita Falls Railway, was duly con-
Under the agreement with the railroad, it became to the personal and interest of the owners of the 18-mile line to do everything they could to make Wichita Falls grow and develop more freight and passenger traffic. They had a special incentive to develop their city, because a bigger city meant more freight and more money their pockets.
This incentive asserted itself in the ensuing 15 years or so. It prompted the construction of additional locally-financed railroad lines. One of them was known as the Wichita Falls and Northwestern, constructed to Frederick, the opening of the Big Pasture reservation in south-westem Oklahoma. Another was the Wichita Falls and whose first terminus was Newcastle. mines had been opened at Newcastle and at that
time seemed to promise consid- WICHITA FALLS IN This is the earliest known portion of Crescent Lake is visible at left. The first
erable traffic. The Northwestern photograph of Wichita County's first brick courthouse. A courthouse was a wooden structure that was later moved.
C e n t e n n i a l
I n d e x
AUendale 92
Barwise, J.H 4
Benvanue 61
Bowie, Texas
Brands
Bridwell, J.S 34
Trail 53
Byers Ranch 17
Charlie 45
Chisholm Trail 54
Club 79
Cotton 23
Courthouse
Crescent Lake
Depression era 81
Enterprise & Business 33
Farming
Fort Griffin 44
Frontier Forts 56
Glass industry 42
Greer, Dr. Albert 60
Hamilton, W.B 91
Hembree, G.A 57
Heritage Ranches
Historical Commission 2
Historical County
Home Remedies 52
Huff, R.E 6
Frank
Kemp, J.A 33
Kemp Hotel 84, 85
Lucy Park 5
Malabar Farm 24
McAbee Family 76
Merchants.
Noble Hardware .96
Outlaws of the West 66
Rainfall Chart 34
Rainmaking 12
Ranching
Rogers, Will 90
Police 6
Schools
Sheppard AFB 34
Sheriffs 22
St. Elmo Hotel 58
St. James Hotel 4
Taylor Foundry 86
Terral, Okla 93
Thornberry 45
Throckmorton 47
Waggoner Ranch
Wheat Harvest 26
Wichita City 10
Wichita Falls' name 4
Wichita Indians 62
Wichita Valley Farms 82
Wilbarger County
Jewelry 37
Object Description
| Title | "The Wichita Falls [TX] Times" - Centennial edition, August 29, 1982 |
| Date | 1982-08-29 |
| Identifier | po-hightower-nwp-wft_1982-08-29 |
| Custodian |
Baylor University - Poage Legislative Library |
| Original Collection | Jack Hightower Collection |
| Rights | http://www.baylor.edu/lib/digitization/index.php?id=94393 |
| Total Pagination | 248 |
| Resource Type | Text |
| Format | Newspapers |
| Language | English |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Resource Type | Text |
| OCR - Transcript | Wichita Falls Times 1882 Challenge of the Wichita Falls townsite opened in 1882 John Gould wrote a regular daily and the townsite was opened for was later built all the way across column for the Wichita Falls Times sale. Organization of Wichita western Oklahoma the South- and also wrote for other publica- County soon followed. em was eventually built to Dub- tions. This article he in 1953 General Greenville Dodge, Texas. The freight from these Civil War veteran and builder lines became, an im- Wichita several railroads, came the portant factor the traffic over in 1880 the Wichita Falls John Gould and made it a proposition to build Other Falls a from come into being the con- a he hoped to years on to He later decades the to and the Wichita Falls and be divided, roughly, five him, bonus payments lahoma branch of the Valley, to Petrolia and Byers and later to The years from 1882, when the amounted to 65 percent of the Waurika, abandoned. townsite was opened, until 1896, assessed was In 1903 oil was discovered near when the Wichita Falls Railway, the community's the site of Petrolia, in fl^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H the 18-mile line between this city spirit that it met those Clay County. The was a and Henrietta now operated burdensome though they small one and attracted at- part of the M-K-T system, was must have been. The chief factor tention among oil operators, and built, may be described as the the undertaking Capt.J.H. the importance of its oil was soon frontier-formative era. Barwise, to be overshadowed by that of its The period from 1896 until ab- northern war veteran, who natural gas. out 1914, before shallow oil began chosen Wichita Falls as . to be a big factor in Wichita daughter had twice drawn the economy, may be slip labeled "Wichita" out of a Falls m 1908, bemg the scribed as the industrial develop- hat two other places' natural gas ment and era. names. for domestic fuel. 1911 until 1927, somewhat The community came to real Wichita Falls at once overlapping the industrial being the arrival to exploit the fact that could velopment era. was a period road. It set about to organize a industries very cheap fuel, which can be called that of county government, and was it- few years a motor low oil development. self, though not without difficul- truck factory, three glass fac- to 1937, by reason of ty, named as the county seat. A tones, a pottery plant and some several unhappy factors, was a thousand or so settlers located lesser industries had been m- period of recession. here, banks, lumberyards and to come here. The mvest- From 1937 to this time, Wichi- stagelines were established and made 1896 began to bear has experienced new the frontier settlement took on CENTENNIAL A mule team Parade last May 15. University United growth and inciden- some of the aspects of an or- pulls a wagon in the Wichita County Centen- Methodist Church is in to the discovery of deep ganized community. of cneap fuel While there was a tiny settle- It grew slowly at first. Most of m operation, they were for a had wanted munities of like appeared Falls continued to ment here m the '70s, Sept. 27, the area hereabouts was in of years very important property but was deterr- nearby. Waggoner City is be- grow after 1920. It is probable 1882 is generally accepted as the ranching properties, but farmers t his wife. She had dreamed lieved to have had a population of that its 1925 population was well birthdate of Wichita Falls. It was began entering the region, wheat of Wichita the pro- 10,000 at one time. Scarcely a in excess of 50,000. on that day that the Fort Worth & and cotton became fac- deveiopment was under and she refused to sign the trace of it and its boom neighbors The era which began in 1896 Denver's first tram arrived here tors, and there slow but way, a new effort be nearby remains today. and which was overlapped by the steady development. itself ... develop it. Wichita Falls reaped an abun- era of shallow witnessed prog- 1896 something Showings of oil had been found So it was that Fowler induced a dant harvest from Burkbur- ress in Wichita Falls in ways not something unprecedented in rail- on the of his fellow to nett boom developments. Smce it directly related to its industrial road building, that gave Wichita ranch in 1905. some money, about had, in the preceding decade, development. growing city Falls a new stimulus. More impressive discoveries and form a company to undertaken to modernize itself was proud of itself, possessed a A few years after 1882 the Fort recorded in 1909. It was on farm. The well came with paved streets, a sewer sys- tremendous faith in its Worth and Denver built north- however, that the flowing over 2,000 barrels a tem, good schools, a modem the- and it set about to do thmgs in westward, and Wichita Falls lost as the ushering in the ater and other impro it keeping with its forward-looking its status as a railhead. The day was brought Clay- in all its frenzied excite- offered oil operators an inviting state of mind. It constructed a when the first tram was operated at place to live. modem theater, built a street car to Harrold, about 35 miles north- The next two or three Derricks appeared on practic- The oil discovered at Electra, line, established a newspap- west, long regarded of witnessed the transforma- ally every townplot in Burkbur- at Burkbumett and m Archer er, developed a big, modem resi- the darkest in this city's early tion of Electra from a tiny In Wichita Falls, the sellers County was found principally at dence section, began to pave its history. It seemed that practical- modem city, Wichita stock in wildcat wells, unable depths of 1,600 to 1,900 feet. Such streets took on some other everybody was moving to Har- benefits from find office space, set up their wells were not costly to drill. A aspects of metropolitanism. Many of them returned in oil development there. In the booths on the street, on Ohio Av- man who could raise as much as The effort to create a city due time. Magnolia Petroleum Co.'s well until a city com- $25,000 could buy a small lease government was an abortive one. Later in the decade the Mis- the Schmoker farm, four miles them to move. and get a well drilled for that Early in the city's history it in- souri-Kansas and Texas com- southwest of Burkbumett, gave census had shown much money. So it was that the corporated under the state's gen- pleted a line from Denison to community its inklings Wichita Falls to have 8,200 popu- Wichita Falls area came to be laws and a municipal gov- Henrietta. Wichitans, realizing excitement. At about the The 1920 census, taken known as a poor man's oil field. It emment began to function. It de- the need of a more direct rail production the boom was at its height, was developed very largely by veloped promptly that a mistake outlet to St. Louis and the north- recorded in Archer County, showed slightly over 40,000. The small independent had been made in the choice of a east, undertook to persuade the unimpressive at the had been intensified early While the major companies had a mayor, that post being held by a railroad to build on to Wichita in 1919, by the brmging in of the part in the operations, a very man who took himself and his job Falls. The was mdifferent Burk-Waggoner well, on the substantial share of the drilling too seriously. Wearying of him, to the idea, even when a very It was in July, that oil Waggoner farm northwest of was carried on by but lacking any legal reason for substantial bonus was offered. became a really big factor in Burkbumett and it gave drilling This meant that most of the pro- removing him from office, the Then it was that Wichitans, Wichita Falls. That month mark- operations a new and exciting ceeds from production stayed in citizenship adopted the effective under the leadership of J.A. ed the bringing in of the Fowler stimulus. A new community, this city and section, a fact that device of dissolving the municip- Kemp, offered to build the 18- townsite well at Burkbumett. City, came into being has weighed very importantly in corporation. For half a dozen mile line themselves if the Katy S.L. Fowler, owner of a farm just near the well, and two other com- Wichita Falls' development. (Continued on Page 14AA) would operate it and give them a percentage of the earnings. The railroad, aware that it couldn't possibly lose under such an arrangement, agreed, and the line, known officially as the Wichita Falls Railway, was duly con- Under the agreement with the railroad, it became to the personal and interest of the owners of the 18-mile line to do everything they could to make Wichita Falls grow and develop more freight and passenger traffic. They had a special incentive to develop their city, because a bigger city meant more freight and more money their pockets. This incentive asserted itself in the ensuing 15 years or so. It prompted the construction of additional locally-financed railroad lines. One of them was known as the Wichita Falls and Northwestern, constructed to Frederick, the opening of the Big Pasture reservation in south-westem Oklahoma. Another was the Wichita Falls and whose first terminus was Newcastle. mines had been opened at Newcastle and at that time seemed to promise consid- WICHITA FALLS IN This is the earliest known portion of Crescent Lake is visible at left. The first erable traffic. The Northwestern photograph of Wichita County's first brick courthouse. A courthouse was a wooden structure that was later moved. C e n t e n n i a l I n d e x AUendale 92 Barwise, J.H 4 Benvanue 61 Bowie, Texas Brands Bridwell, J.S 34 Trail 53 Byers Ranch 17 Charlie 45 Chisholm Trail 54 Club 79 Cotton 23 Courthouse Crescent Lake Depression era 81 Enterprise & Business 33 Farming Fort Griffin 44 Frontier Forts 56 Glass industry 42 Greer, Dr. Albert 60 Hamilton, W.B 91 Hembree, G.A 57 Heritage Ranches Historical Commission 2 Historical County Home Remedies 52 Huff, R.E 6 Frank Kemp, J.A 33 Kemp Hotel 84, 85 Lucy Park 5 Malabar Farm 24 McAbee Family 76 Merchants. Noble Hardware .96 Outlaws of the West 66 Rainfall Chart 34 Rainmaking 12 Ranching Rogers, Will 90 Police 6 Schools Sheppard AFB 34 Sheriffs 22 St. Elmo Hotel 58 St. James Hotel 4 Taylor Foundry 86 Terral, Okla 93 Thornberry 45 Throckmorton 47 Waggoner Ranch Wheat Harvest 26 Wichita City 10 Wichita Falls' name 4 Wichita Indians 62 Wichita Valley Farms 82 Wilbarger County Jewelry 37 |
| Format | Newspapers |
| Language | English |