Bitter Cold Grips Area

 Yesterday's afternoon sun wasn't warm enough to thaw the frost on the ground at Old Town Park.

When I complained last week about how cold it was, I didn’t know it was going to be even colder this week, but it was. The arctic cold front that swept through the area pushed temperatures farther down than they already had been, and on Monday, the new year began with a low of 6°F with a wind chill of -8°. That’s the coldest Roscoe has been since I returned in 2010. And the rest of the week wasn’t that much better. The temperature hasn’t been above freezing since Saturday when the high was a balmy 38°.

It seems like longer than just a few days since the mercury rose to 55° on Friday. Saturday’s high was 38°, Sunday’s 28°, Monday’s 20°, and yesterday’s 25°. The lows on those days was 24°, 15°, 6°, and 16° respectively along with this morning’s 17°. The last days of last week were cloudy and misty, and the mist froze when it covered the grass and tree limbs. The sun came out long enough to melt the ice on the trees, but the frost was still on the grass yesterday afternoon despite the sunshine.

The good news is that the highs for the rest of the week should be in the fifties and warming up to 65° on Sunday. Lows will be below freezing up to Saturday, when the low will rise to around 44°. Winds should also be mild. Unfortunately, there is still no precipitation in the forecast.

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NO ROSCOE HARD TIMES NEXT WEEK

Next Tuesday, I will drive to Houston for a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. Then I’ll drive back to Roscoe on Thursday. As a result, I will not be around next Wednesday to post the Roscoe Hard Times.

Publication will resume the following Wednesday, January 17, and anything that happens this coming week should be included then.

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ALBANY DEFEATS PLOWBOYS 62-44

In a game played yesterday evening in Albany, the Lions beat the Plowboys 62-44.

Scores by quarters:

Albany              22        44        53        62
Plowboys          10        16        24        44

Individual Plowboy scoring: Brandon Lavalais 8, Jayden Gonzales 5, Junior Martinez 5, Jose Ortega 4, Brayan Medina 4, Micheal Wright 4, Camden Boren 4, Clemente Aguayo 3, Nick Limones 2, Anglin 2.

The Plowboys open district play with Hamlin at the RCHS Special Events Center Friday at 8:00pm.

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PLOWGIRLS FALL TO ALBANY 40-29

The Lady Lions were too much for the Plowgirls in Albany yesterday, winning by a score of 40-29.

Scores by quarters:

Albany              7          23        32        40
Plowgirls          8          13        25        29

Individual Plowgirl scoring: Veronica Cuellar 10, Kinzie Buchanan 9, Baylor Trevino 3.

The Plowgirls also open district play against Hamlin here in Roscoe Friday evening at 6:30pm.

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THE COMING OF THE RAILROAD AND ROSCOE'S BEGINNINGS

As promised a few weeks ago, this is the second part of Roscoe's earliest history. It covers the coming of the railroad and the establishment of permanent settlements, as well as the transition of unpopulated Katula to the settlement of Vista and the establishment of the town of Roscoe.

A T&P engine of the type used in 1881.  The car behind it was known as the tender.

The coming of the Texas & Pacific railroad to west Texas in 1881 greatly accelerated the advance of settlers and civilization to the untamed area. Twelve years earlier, the first transcontinental rail line had been completed up north when the Central Pacific Railroad, laying track east from California, connected with the Union Pacific coming west from Iowa. The northern railway’s completion greatly eased the movement of people and materials from the east to the west coast. Trips from St. Louis to the west coast  that had taken months could now be made much more quickly and safely. Its completion also sparked interest in a transcontinental southern route, and in 1871 the Texas & Pacific Railroad was chartered by the Texas legislature.

In 1874, the new company sent out surveyors to find the best route across west Texas. They mapped out three possible east-west routes from Fort Worth to El Paso before settling on the center one, which came to be known as the Center Line Trail. This hitherto unnamed trail, which ran directly through what is now the Roscoe area, was older than its new name. Before the surveyors ever came, it was used by buffalo hunters as they went east to Weatherford and Fort Worth or west to Colorado (now Colorado City) and Big Springs (now Big Spring), both watering stops that preceded the coming of the railroad. As far back as the 1850s, the same trail had been used by southerners on their way west hoping to make their fortunes in the California gold rush.

Unbroken west Texas prairie, much as it would have looked in 1880.

In 1880, Captain E. B. McBurnett, a Confederate veteran, took a load of oats from Eastland County to feed the mules of some Texas & Pacific surveyors working near Colorado City. In later life, he wrote a memoir of that trip, which describes what this area was like before the railroad came. He followed the Center Line Trail on his way out and camped briefly at Seven Wells, near Colorado City, before returning to Eastland. He was so impressed with the Roscoe area that he returned the following year to become one of its first settlers. The ranch he established was about six miles southeast of present-day Roscoe.

A Texas & Pacific track-laying gang in the 1880s.

Then, in 1881, the Texas & Pacific Railway, building its railroad west from Weatherford, reached Abilene on January 13 and Sweetwater on March 11. Following the Center Line Trail, the track gangs moved through the Roscoe area around the last week of March. By April 12, they were in Colorado City and moving westward toward Big Springs and other water sources farther on.

As the laying of the track progressed westward, its work gangs built water stops about every ten miles so its steam engines would have the water necessary for them to run. From Abilene to Colorado City, T&P officials named several of these water stops, anticipating that they would soon become towns: Tebo (now Tye), Merkel, Trent, Eskota, Sweetwater, Katula, and Loraine.

The trestle over Cottonwood Creek today three miles west of town.  This is the site where the three men died in 1881.

Less than a month after the line reached Colorado [City], there were two major train wrecks in Nolan County, both with fatalities and both on the morning of May 3, caused by trestle washouts from a heavy rainstorm. The first was on Sweetwater Creek, just east of the tent city of Sweetwater, and the second was on Cottonwood Creek, three miles west of Katula. Two men were killed in the Sweetwater Creek accident, and three were killed and another seriously injured in the Cottonwood Creek wreck. The latter is the earliest recorded historical incident concerning what would later become the Roscoe area. The Dallas Herald detailed its events in three articles, two on the day after the accident, one from Weatherford and the other from Colorado City.

With the arrival of the railroad, the people living around Sweetwater Creek moved to the present location of Sweetwater to rebuild next to the new station. The post office moved with them, and they continued to call their community Sweet Water. At first it was a town of tents, but soon wooden structures were built, and it was named the county seat for Nolan County. It prospered and its population grew. By 1883, it had a courthouse, a few stores and saloons, a hotel or two, churches and residences—and about 1300 people. But then it shrank considerably during the drouth years of 1885, ‘86 and ‘87. This was also the time of the great cattle die-off during the blizzard of 1886, when thousands of cattle all over west Texas drifted south and froze to death. By 1889 Sweetwater had fewer than half the people it had had five years earlier, and in 1890 its population was only 614.

From 1881 to 1889, while Sweetwater’s fortunes were waxing and waning, Katula, eight miles to the west, remained an unsettled flagstop. The train stopped there only by pre-arrangement or when someone flagged it down. A used boxcar served as its depot.

During that time, the land around Katula was used by J. S. Johnson to raise sheep. Johnson, an early sheriff of Nolan County, was the first person ever to buy a lot in the new town of Sweetwater (now the southeast corner of Oak and Broadway).

R. C. Crane, in his 1932 article, “Early Days in Sweetwater,” relates this story about him:

"In passing it is interesting to note that it was told of J. S. Johnson that he was in the sheep business when the Texas and Pacific Railway Company was building through the county and then herded his sheep where the town of Roscoe is now located. There were no people in reach anywhere near. One day while Johnson was out herding his sheep he discovered that he was entirely out of chewing tobacco. It is said that thereupon he flagged down a passing freight train to get a chew from the engineer or fireman."

In 1889, a switch off the main line and a shipping pen were built at Katula for loading cattle on their way to be sold in Fort Worth. There was also a section house for railroad employees and a few huts where some Mexicans lived.

The Katula area had only a handful of residents, but the potential for growth was already recognized, and the inhabitants expected more settlers to soon be on the way. The fertile black soil of the Blackland Divide held promise for farms and ranches, and pure, fresh water was available not too far underground and could be brought up by a recent innovation to the west, the windmill.

In 1889, the first family to live in what is now Roscoe, the Whortons, bought a section of land less than a mile north of the Katula station and settled in, building a two-story wooden home, breaking land for cultivation, and starting a farm. They were from Georgia, but had lived for a couple of years in Ellis County, about 30 miles south of Dallas, before coming west. F. M. Whorton, the family patriarch, was eager to purchase the virgin land since the land they had farmed in Georgia was worn out from many years of farming in a time when farmers didn’t know about conservation and crop rotation.

Shortly thereafter, John A. “Jack” Thompson arrived at Katula wanting to find a site for a general store. He had sold his store in Bell County and come west to start a new life. Since there was no other place for him to stay, the Whortons invited him to stay with them, and he was there over the Christmas holidays. F. M. Whorton suggested he buy the section of land just north of his, the one between the Whorton land and the depot. There his store could be close to the railroad and section house, which had been rebuilt after the original one burned down. Thompson bought the section of land, paying $4 an acre for it. He then built a two-story building with six rooms on each floor, the front of which became the Thompson General Store. The rest became the family residence when his wife and daughter came out on the train.

He and others decided to name their budding community Vista. This must have been in the latter part of 1889. The first historical record I could find using the new name is in an Abilene Reporter article dated February 28, 1890. Entitled “Over 11,000 Acres in a Wheat Farm,” it says: “Arrangements have about been completed for the sale of 11,000 acres of land near Vista, a station on the T. P. Railway, 50 miles west of this city…” Before Thompson had finished building his store and residence, a dwelling was started by Dr. W. T. Wallace, and settlers began to come in.

Newspaper records show that the community was called Vista for less than two years. A short entry in the Abilene Reporter on August 14, 1891, mentions that “F. E. Bompart made a flying trip to Roscoe Saturday evening.” Less than a month earlier on July 17, the town had still been called Vista when a real estate company advertised “13 sections of the finest land in the state, in the western portion of Nolan County, 40 miles west of Abilene within 1-1½ to 5 miles of the town Vista on the Texas & Pacific railroad.” So, Vista became Roscoe sometime between July 17 and August 14, 1891.

The name change came when the settlement’s residents applied for a Post Office named Vista. Because there was already a town named Vesta ten miles southeast of Albany, where their mail was often missent, the postmaster, William H. Brasher, was told they would have to use a different name. Brasher told them to call it Roscoe, which was the name of the son of the superintendent of the T & P railroad between Weatherford and El Paso.

During the time that the community was known as Vista, settlers living in the area included the Emersons, who lived in a dugout until they could build a house, the Goodes, the McBurnetts, F. F. Walts, and the Lagows, as well as the Whortons and a few others.

The first church service was held in the Whorton home when a Methodist minister came there, but not too long after, the residents got together and built a one-room wooden building where church services and a school for the children could be held. It was located where the Church of Christ now stands, and all denominations held their services there. These included the Methodists, Baptists, Fundamental Baptists, and Church of Christ. The school’s first teacher was C. S. Knott, known locally as Professor Knott.

By this time, the town had become a functioning community. An ad for land sales in the Abilene Reporter on September 11, 1891, says the land is, “near the new and growing town of Roscoe.” “The country is settling fast and good church, school, and trading facilities are to be found in Roscoe.”

This article from the October 29, 1892, Fort Worth Gazette suggests how much Roscoe had developed by the following year as a new and growing town:

ROSCOE
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THE GROWING TOWN OF NOLAN COUNTY
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The Center of Cheap and Productive Farming Lands—The Country Rapidly Filling Up—What is Needed.
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ROSCOE, NOLAN COUNTY, TEX., Oct. 27 [1892].—[Special.]—West Texas is progressing, but just at present Nolan county is receiving a great amount of attention from people not only in Texas, but other states.  Roscoe, a flourishing town, is situated in this county and is surrounded by some of the best agricultural lands to be found in the Lone Star State.  The worth of these lands is manifest to all when it is known that 200 families have bought homes within the past six months and will settle here before the first of next January.

The county is rapidly filling up and thereby creates new openings for business men in Roscoe.  At present the town is badly in need of a few more good, live merchants.  A good saddler and hardware business would also be a paying investment.  A bank is also much needed.  The prevailing idea among even the people of Texas is that this country is only fit for grazing purposes, but that idea will be knocked out of anyone who will take the time to visit Nolan county.  The soil is very productive and will produce nearly anything in the way of crops that can be raised anywhere in Texas.  Mr. Crocker of Garland, Arkansas, after visiting this country writes back, “My friends will not believe our reports of your country.  I will be back with ten others in a few days.”

Any person desiring a home in a farming country will do well to visit Nolan County before they locate.  Low rates of fare can be had over the Texas and Pacific railway to Roscoe for all who wish to look at the country.  Lands, choice lands, are yet cheap and can be bought on advantageous terms.  Roscoe is at present enjoying great prosperity.  New buildings are being erected, new enterprises are being started.  A roller flouring mill and a new Methodist college are soon to be erected and will add much to the advantage of the town.  Visit Nolan and Roscoe and you will never regret it.

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