Texas Historical Marker #00454
Boot Hill Cemetery. 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 #454
US 385 at Boy's Ranch, Vega, TX, United States
Texas Historical Marker #03845
Oldham County. Formed from Young and Bexar territories; created August 21, 1876; organized January 12, 1881. Named in honor of Williamson Simpson Oldham 1813-1868; Arkansas lawyer and jurist; member of the Confederate Senate from Texas. County seat, Tascosa, 1881; Vega, since 1915. #3845
US 38, N or Vega at Canadian River, Vega, TX, United States
Texas Historical Marker #05199
Tascosa. Cowboy capital of the Texas Panhandle, 1877-1888. "Billy the Kid" and cowboys from many ranches added to its liveliness. Made famous by wild west fiction. Its name is a corruption of Atascoso (boggy) first given to nearby creek. County seat of Oldham County, 1881-1915. #5199
US 385, N of Vega on Boys Ranch, Vega, TX, United States
Texas Historical Marker #05201
Tascosa Courthouse, 1884.. Served 12 counties in Panhandle. Site of trials for killings that had filled Boothill Cemetery. Until 1915 Oldham County seat. Many years headquarters, Julian Bivins Ranch. Birthplace of Cal Farley's Boys Ranch, 1939. #5201
US 385, N of Vega 24 mi., Vega, TX, United States
Texas Historical Marker #01088
County Named for Texas Confederate Senator W. S. Oldham 1813-1868. (Star and Wreath) Legislator, judge, newspaperman. Came to Texas from Arkansas. Member 1861 Texas Secession Convention. Chosen delegate to provisional Confederate Congress, Montgomery, Ala. Sent Arkansas to work for secession by Jefferson Davis 1861. Texas Confederate Senator 1862-1865. Influential defender of of states rights, and granting president power to suspend writ of habeas corpus. A memorial to Texans who served the Confederacy. #1088
US 385, NW corner of Courthouse lawn, Vega, TX, United States
Texas Historical Marker #02989
LS Alamosa Ranch Headquarters. Made of native sandstone hauled from a nearby creek, this house was built in 1886 for the manager of the LS Ranch owned by W. M. D. Lee and Lucien B. Scott. Stonemason Tom Nolan designed it, and the twin bunkhouse facing it, from a picture on the Arbuckle Coffee sack. Former Tascosa Sheriff Jim East was first ranch manager to live here. In 1939 Jack Mansfield bought the property and in 1950 enlarged the house, which is still owned by the family. #2989
US 385, N of Vega, Vega, TX, United States
Texas Historical Marker #04861
Tascosa. Contains one of the famous Boot Hill cemeteries of wild west days and was the gathering place for pleasure-seeking cowboys, gamblers and "bad men" of the Panhandle in the 1870s and '80s. Outlaws such as Billy the Kid and lawmen like Pat Garrett and Bat Masterson walked its streets. At first an Indian camping place at a crossing on the Canadian River, then Mexican trading point and pastoral settlement, Atascosa (Boggy Place) rapidly became an open-range trading center and capital of a cattle empire from 1876 to 1887. Romero Plaza and Howard and Rinehart store marked the boom in growth. Struggles between large ranch owners like Charles Goodnight and the "Little Men" of the plains were focused there. Became seat of Oldham County, 1880, and the legal capital of ten unorganized counties. Progress spelled doom for the town. The railroad in 1887 created other important towns and barbed wire fences ended the vital trading routes and great roundups. The open ranges and cattle trails like the famous Dodge City Trail were gone. When county seat was moved to Vega in 1915, few residents remained. Today "Old Tascosa" retains only the courthouse. #4861
NW corner of Courthouse Lawn, US 385, Vega, TX, United States
Texas Historical Marker #02518
Home County of Doctor Oscar H. Loyd (1868-1959). Oldham County's first physician. A civic leader, weather researcher and humanitarian. Born in Kansas, he attended medical school in Missouri, and in 1907 moved to Vega with his wife, Lulu Mills Loyd. Despite opposition from ranchers, he introduced farming to the area; broke sod with county's first steam tractor; exhibited best produce in the county -- first at the Tri-State Fair (which he helped to organize) in Amarillo, and then at state fairs in Iowa, Illinois, Missouri and Texas. A volunteer weather observer for over 30 years, he telephoned daily reports at his own expense to the Amarillo Weather Bureau. His weather notes are now in Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon. To make sick calls, Doctor Loyd bought a Maxwell, the first automobile in the county. During the 1918 flu epidemic he not only cared for the sick day and night but also dispensed food and buried the dead. As a civic leader, he organized the county's first Chamber of Commerce and a baseball team which he transported to its games. He actively sponsored the original Highway 66 Association. His estate was left to religious and charitable groups in the county. #2518
Northwest corner of Courthouse square, Vega, TX, United States
Texas Historical Marker #03822
Old Tascosa. Old Tascosa, cowboy capital of the plains, lay one-half mile northeast. In its brief span it became the center of the open-range world. Stomping 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. 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. #3822
US 385, N. of Vega at Canadian River, Vega, TX, United States
Texas Historical Marker #05352
The Historic LS. Great early ranch well known to badman Billy the Kid and other famed western characters. The LS was founded in 1870s by former Indian territory trader W. M. D. Lee and New York financier Lucien Scott. Through Lee's efforts, the LS had water and grass for over 100,000 cattle and sometimes drove 6 or 7 herds a year up the trail. When thefts followed Billy the Kid's visits, LS men rode west and brought back their cattle; and when Tascosa gunfights put men into Boot Hill graves, the LS escaped disaster. But drouth brought heavy losses in 1886; and grant of 3,000,000 acres of panhandle lands to the XIT (state of Texas' payment for constructing Capitol in Austin) cut old LS range in half. Lee left in 1890 to promote a ship canal in Houston. Scott died 1893. W. H. Gray and E. F. Swift of Chicago bought LS in 1905. Memorable LS men included foreman J. E. McAlister, later a Channing merchant. One of the $25-a-month cowboys was E. L. Doheny, later a multi-millionaire oil man involved in 1920's Teapot Dome scandal. Ownership of brand and 96,000 acres of LS range passed to Col. C. T. Herring, rancher and civic leader of Amarillo; his estate still operates it. #5352
US 385, at Canadian River bridge, N of Vega, Vega, TX, United States
Texas Historical Marker #02016
Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail. What came to be known as the Fort Smith - Santa Fe Trail was first blazed in 1840 by Josiah Gregg, a trader seeking a route to Santa Fe along the south side of the Canadian River. In 1849, Gregg's route was closely followed by a military escort led by Capt. Randolph B. Marcy (1812-1857). Marcy's group traveled from Fort Smith, Arkansas to Santa Fe with about 500 pioneers heading for California. The party entered Oldham County on June 13th, and on June 14th ascended to the Llano Estacado near this site. Reaching the top, Marcy found the plains "as boundless...and trackless as the ocean...a desolate waste of uninhabited solitude." Eighty-five days after leaving Fort Smith, the party reached Santa Fe. After passing the plains, Marcy remarked, "I have never passed a country where wagons could move along with as much ease and facility, without expenditure of any labor in making a road, as upon this route." Marcy advocated the trail as a prospective route for a transcontinental railroad, which was built after the Civil War. Later, as the country entered the automobile age and the interstate highway system was developed, U.S. Highway 66 (Route 66) and Interstate 40 were laid close to the trail. (1991) #2016
IH-40, Vega, TX, United States