Intro: November 2011
Time to say good-bye to Arkansas and think about my route westward. After looking over the maps, I decided to take a little jog down into Louisiana and see what I could see.
On my last trip West, my route was up to Texarkana and then nearly due west to Paris, TX. A more direct route, to be sure. But, I wanted to bypass busy Texarkana and enjoy some more quiet roads and countryside.
And quiet it was.
The far northwestern section of Louisiana I travelled through is a far cry from the Atchafalaya and New Orleans - the area I am most familiar with.
This route would take me through Claiborne, Webster, Bossier and Caddo counties, or parishes as they call them down here.
Caddo Parish derived its name from the Caddo Nation which is " a confederacy of several Southeastern Native American tribes, who traditionally inhabited much of what is now East Texas, northern Louisiana and portions of southern Arkansas and Oklahoma. Today the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma is a cohesive tribe with its capital at Binger, Oklahoma. The different Caddo languages have converged into a single language." - WikiPedia
A bit of digging turned up some interesting information about the Caddo people.
If one views the Caddoan archaeological sequence as a tree trunk, identifiable branches seem to begin spreading by about A.D. 1450 (Belcher Focus). After that point, several distinct tribal branches can be recognized, each with its own particular language, or dialect, and customs. Within relatively short distances these groups often exhibited striking differences.
The Louisiana Caddoan-speaking groups were the Adaes, Doustioni, Natchitoches, Ouachita, and Yatasi. These groups seem to have been concentrated around Natchitoches, Mansfield, Monroe, and Rebeline, Louisiana. Their total aboriginal territory stretched from the Ouachita River west to the Sabine River and south to the mouth of Cane River.
On Red River; in northeastern Texas and southwestern Arkansas, there were other Caddoan groups: Kadohadacho, Petit Caddo, Nasoni, Nanatsoho, and Upper Natchitoches. Eventually, due to pressure from the Osage, these groups migrated south to Louisiana and settled north of the Yatasi, near Caddo Prairie and Caddo Lake.
Source: ©2011 Louisiana Department Of Culture Recreation And Tourism
This village scene shows the bee-hive shape of the sturdy grass houses made by Caddo Indians of East Texas. The Caddo people were farmers who rarely migrated. They are known to have grown corn, beans, pumpkins, squashes, watermelons, sunflowers, and tobacco. They often hunted bear, deer, small mammals, and birds. The tribes collected shellfish, nuts, berries, seeds, and roots.
There is more information on the construction of the grass houses at the web site Texas Beyond History
In William B. Glover's "A History of the Caddo Indians" we find out a bit more.
The Cadodacho (real Caddo, Caddo proper), seem to have lived as a tribe on Red River of Louisiana from time immemorial. According to tribal traditions the lower Red River of Louisiana was their original home, from which they migrated west and northwest. Penicaut reported in 1701 that the Caddo lived on the Sabloniere, or Red River, about one hundred and seventy leagues above Natchitoches, which places them a little above the big bend of Red River near the present towns of Fulton, Arkansas, and Texarkana. In 1800 the Caddo moved down the Red River near Caddo Lake, which placed them about one hundred and twenty miles from the present town of Natchitoches.
It is impossible to determine with exactness the population of the Caddo during the early period, for no record of a census is available until after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Fletcher says that before the coming of the French and Spanish they were no doubt a thrifty and numerous people."' One writer states that during their early history they must have numbered about ten thousand. No doubt this estimate included both the Caddo and Hasinai Confederacies. According to a report from the Indian agent at Natchitoches made in 1805 the tribes of the Caddo confederacy at that time numbered approximately six hundred, not including children.
Original Source: The Louisiana Historical Quarterly
Personally, I have no strong interest in Native American History. But after reading bits and pieces of Glover's History of the Caddo Indians I have to admit I found it quite compelling, interesting and of course, another sad commentary on the extermination of Native Americans.
But, all is not lost. Look what we have instead of a bunch of half naked savages: WalMarts, strip mines, obesity, and resource depletion, to name a few of the benefits of modern living.
Speaking of modern living - time to burn up some more gasoline!
The first town of note I went through in Louisiana was Haynesville, population about 2600. Oil was what put Haynesville on the map.
Haynesville was settled in 1818. The community took the name "Haynesville" in 1843 from farmer Samuel Haynes of Georgia, who established Old Haynesville some two miles south of the present site of the town. In 1898, the whole town moved north to meet the railroad, now the Louisiana and Northwest Railroad.
Modern Haynesville was built on a 1920s petroleum boom, one of the largest in Louisiana. For a time, the population reached twenty thousand. The "old boom town" was constructed in what is called Baucum Spur. It consisted of a hotel, restaurants, and saloons.
The Haynesville economy is supported still by oil as well as hunting, fishing, and timber, with considerable logging and pulpwood production in the area.
Source: WikiPedia
Continuing west, I drove through a woods which looked identical to that which I had walked in on Thanksgiving Day. But, occasionally this was broken by Loblolly Pine (Pinus taeda) plantations which were most likely cut for pulp wood. In many areas commercial pine plantations have replaced the native Shortleaf Pine (Pinus echinata) and hardwood forest.
This area is part of the ecoregion known as the South Central Plains and once was part of the historic range of the Louisiana Pine Snake (Pituophis ruthveni) now considered to be the rarest snake in North America.
How did it get that way? Same old story - habitat manipulation and destruction by humans.
The Louisiana Pine Snake is a large, nonvenomous constrictor of the Colubridae family. This powerful snake is notable because if its large eggs and small clutch sizes. The Louisiana Pine Snake is indigenous to west-central Louisiana and eastern Texas, where it relies strongly on the Baird's Pocket Gopher for its burrow system and as a food source.
The Louisiana Pine Snake is rarely seen in the wild and is considered to be one of the rarest snakes in North America. The demise of the species is due its low fecundancy coupled with the extensive loss of suitable habitat - the Longleaf Pine savannas in the Gulf coastal plain of the southeastern United States. Management activities are being conducted to promote the species' recovery.
Louisiana Pine Snakes originally occurred in at least nine Louisiana parishes and fourteen Texas counties, coinciding with a disjunctive portion of the Longleaf Pine ecosystem west of the Mississippi River. They are now found in only four Louisiana parishes and five Texas counties. In Texas, records confirm their presence only in the southern portion of Sabine National Forest (Sabine County) and adjacent private land (Newton County), and in the southern portion of Angelina National Forest (Angelina, Jasper, Tyler counties).
Nearly all recent records are from two separate areas, each measuring less than 4 miles (6.4 km) in radius, and a third site (Scrappin' Valley) managed by Temple-Inland Corporation in northern Newton County. Most Louisiana records originate in Bienville Parish on privately owned forestland. A second population occurs on federal lands in Vernon Parish (Fort Polk, U.S. Army, and Kisatchie National Forest). An apparently third population has been found near the juncture of Vernon, Sabine and Natchitoches parishes.
Source: WikiPedia
As I travelled westward on SR 2, I passed through several small towns. Tiny Shongaloo, with a population of 180. From what I can find out, Shongaloo is an Indian term meaning "Running Water" or "Cypress Tree". Hmmm... Cypress Trees do live in water, so maybe that is the connection. Shongaloo is pronounced Shawn-ga-lew.
Then came Sarepta, which the 2000 census has listed as a population of 925. Sarepta was named for the town's first church's benefactor, Sarepta Carter.
Serepta's claim to fame is being the home town of country singer Trace Adkins.
That name sounded vaguely familiar but that's about it. I generally find country music lyrics whiney and inane and unoriginal. The instrument work is another story.
Next was the town of Plain Dealing, only slightly larger than Sarepta at a population of 1,071. Given the remote feel of the area one would never guess Plain Dealing is just 30 miles north of Shreveport which has a population of nearly 200,000 and is the largest city in Louisiana.
I was intrigued by the name Plain Dealing and started poking around. I turned up this:
Plain Dealing was a vast, unsettled wilderness in 1839 when the Gilmers, who were among the first settlers of North Bossier Parish, arrived. George Oglethorpe Gilmer and his oldest son, James Blair Gilmer, bought from the United States Government thousands of acres of land on both sides of the Red River. Also, George O. Gilmer bought 5,000 acres a few miles from the Red River where he found beautiful rolling hills and pure springs.
He moved his family there and established Plain Dealing Plantation which was named for the family plantation in Virginia. The Gilmers’ plantation, established in North Louisiana, includes the present site of the town of Plain Dealing. Tradition states Plain Dealing was named for the Virginia plantation with the golden rule name. Plain Dealing, both the town and the plantation’s namesake, stood for honesty and integrity as their name implies.
I was unable to turn up any history on the Plain Dealing Plantation mentioned above. If you come across anything, please let me know.
NOTE: Virginia Jeanne sent me this: Mike, There is a Plain Dealing Farm near Scottsville in Albemarle Co., Va. And, there were Gilmers in Albemarle Co. as far back as the mid 18th century. I would bet that's the connection to the Louisiana plantation.
After leaving the poke-and-plum town of Plain Dealing, I continued westward on SR 2. I drove though a checker board of intact forest, clear-cuts, pine plantations and agricultural land. Not much chance of seeing a Louisiana Pine Snake around these here parts!
I wandered through the quiet and secluded country side when suddenly I got a visual shock.
Click on the photos below for a larger image.
I had suddenly popped out of the woods and I was now looking at a monumental bridge which crossed the famous Red River.
And, this bridge is big! And, my meander through the woods most of the morning made this bridge seem even more imposing on the landscape.
I pulled off of the bridge and ramp access area and stopped to take a look at this informational sign.
There was a gold mine of interesting tid-bits here. But what caught my attention was the reference to the "Red River Raft" and how it impeded navigation.
Centuries ago the Red River did not flow into the Mississippi River. Instead, it cut through the Atchafalaya of Louisiana south to the Gulf of Mexico. As all rivers do at some time in their life, the Red River changed course and cut through eastern Louisiana to the Mississippi River. This change is thought to be the cause of the great raft.
The Great Raft was a gigantic logjam, a series of "rafts," on the Red River that was unique in North America. Possibly it had begun to form around 1100-1200 AD, though it may have been in progress long before that. Its lower end was about ten miles upstream from Natchitoches, Louisiana by 1806 and it stretched nearly 300 miles up the river.
The reason for the raft's formation is thought to be caused when the Red River finally joined the Mississippi and the high flooding stages of the Big River caused a backup of flood debris during the heavy rains each spring. Once the first logjam occurred, the process continued building upstream. It took many years for the logs on the front of the jam to rot or dislodge. During this process the logjam continued to build up at the back end faster than the front was eroding away.
The log jams made navigation unpredictable and sometimes impossible. When the Army built Fort Cantonment Towson, the first military post on the Red River above Natchitoches, and it failed to receive a season’s supplies, the War Department insisted that the river be improved.
In 1828 Congress set aside $25,000 for the raft’s removal and sent engineers and surveyors to examine the raft. They returned, feeling that it would be best to desert the idea, as they foresaw the project’s costs amounting to $2 or 3 million. 15 In ten years the raft claimed 100,000 acres according to Dr. Joseph Paxton, who persuaded Congress to supply funds for the removal.
Captain Henry Miller Shreve, who had served as the Superintendent of Western River Improvement since December 10, 1826, felt that it was possible to remove the raft. In February of 1833 Brigadier General Charles Gratiot, Chief of the Engineers of the War Department, gave Shreve orders to remove the raft. He was given what was left of the original $25,000 that had been set aside for the project; the remaining amount was $21,663. Read the rest...
Source: © Parish of Caddo 2004
But, log jams or rafts weren't the only problem. Even after the rafts were cleared there were still all the floating snags to contend with. In 1824 this was dealt with by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the use of "Snag Boats".
In America’s steamboat era, the main danger to waterborne travel and commerce was neither fire nor explosions, but rather snags—trees that had fallen into the rivers as a result of bank erosion. The current carried them to the center of the stream, and the heavier end, that with the roots, became lodged in the riverbed with the other end pointed downstream at an angle. A snag could punch a hole in a boat’s hull, often causing it to sink. Particularly dangerous were the fallen trees that lay hidden beneath the river’s surface. Snags caused enormous losses of vessels, cargoes, and lives.
The first truly practicable snag boat was conceived by veteran riverman Henry Miller Shreve. Christened the Heliopolis, it was a twin-hulled craft with an iron-sheathed beam, called a butting beam, connecting the hulls. To remove a snag, the vessel rammed it with the butting beam, dislodging the snag and allowing the crew to lift it onto the boat with a windlass. There it was cut up, the pieces to be used as fuel or thrown into the water to float harmlessly downstream.
Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
The terms "snag" and "raft" seemed to be used interchangeably in the recounting of this. But, the photos make it clear what was what - at least to me.
Once the log rafts were cleared and the snags under control, cotton production was able to expand now that it had clear navigation for shipping up and down the Red River.
Cotton was a crop of major importance and the Red River flood plain produced a lot of it. During the Civil War a flotilla of 20 Union gunboats and 27,000 men went up the Red River in the hopes of capturing and securing this area. The North was short on cotton and capturing this area would assure a steady supply to the Union Army.
But the campaign did not go well and ended up with the Union Soldiers in retreat and the gunboats stranded in low water.
The access road which led to the informational sign wound around and under the bridge to a parking area, boat ramp and pic-nic area.
Leaving the Red River behind, I continued on west and then north to the town of Paris, Texas where I spent two nights. I took no photos on this visit but if you are interested in seeing some you can check out the photos from my visit in 2010.
When I departed Paris I drove west on US 82 through Sherman which was named after General Sidney Sherman (July 23, 1805 – August 1, 1873), a hero of the Texas Revolution and then Gainesville.
Then it was on to Muenster which was "founded in 1889 by German Catholic settlers Carl and Emil Flusche, who invited other German Catholics to join them. The town was originally to be called Westphalia, but since the name Westphalia, Texas was already taken, Muenster was selected instead in honor of Münster, the capital of Westphalia, but these cities are not sister-cities." - WikiPedia
About 10 miles west of Muenster I intersected State Highway 59 at St Jo and then headed south on 59 towards Bowie and then on to Jacksboro.
Like most places, but especially in the West (or so it seems to me) the towns all have interesting histories.
Jacksboro was first settled in the 1850s, attracted by land offers from the Texas Emigration and Land Office. Originally called Mesquiteville, the community grew up in the pastureland near Keechi Creek. It was renamed Jacksboro in 1858 when it became the county seat, in honor of brothers William and Patrick Jack, veterans of the Texas Revolution. Regular postal service began in 1859.
The county was one of the few to vote against secession before the Civil War. It was devastated by Indian raids until Fort Richardson was built south of Jacksboro in 1870. The population quickly bounced back into the thousands, and the town gained national attention in 1871 when two Kiowa chiefs, Satanta and Big Tree, were tried for murder there.
Source: WikiPedia
Jacksboro is home to Fort Richardson State Park, Historic Site and Lost Creek Reservoir State Trailway. I stopped at the trailhead north of town. It was windy and rather chilly so I put off my ride for another day.
Lost Creek Reservoir State Trailway trail was funded through the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, with Texas Parks and Wildlife, the City of Jacksboro and Jack County as partners and shared in the matching funds for this grant program. It was authorized for construction in 1994. The cost for the trail was $442,000.00. The grand opening ceremony of was held on National Trails Day, June 6, 1998.
Located at Fort Richardson and Jacksboro, this approximately 10-mile hike, bike and equestrian trail runs adjacent to Fort Richardson and along Lost Creek, which is the main watershed for the two city lakes. The trail follows scenic Lost Creek and travels the east side of Lake Jacksboro and Lost Creek Reservoir.
The trail crosses the dam at Lost Creek Reservoir and winds along the west side until you enter the trail head. This is a linear trail system that winds with the terrain and abounds in scenic beauty. It travels through the park with many shaded areas of pecan and oak trees. Most of the trail travels by the creek or lakes which provide numerous opportunities to fish and swim. This is a beautiful trail, abundant also in wildlife and wild flowers. There is a trail head at Fort Richardson State Park &Historic Site and a trail head on Lost Creek Reservoir.This trail is 10 feet wide and has an improved surfacing of base material and a topping of approximately 4" of screening materials. This type of surface creates a smooth trail for all types of use.
Source: Texas State Parks
In Jacksboro I picked up US 380 and continued on West, passing through Bryson and Graham. After looking at the website for Graham I regret not stopping there.
Then it was on to Newcastle. Following the beginning of coal mining in 1908, the town was established and named for the English coal town, Newcastle upon Tyne. Coal mining had ended by 1942. The population was 575 at the 2000 - WikiPedia
Then it was on to Throckmorton.
Throckmorton is home to Josie Throckmorton who heads up the girl band "Josie and the Wailers".
This rest stop is just east of Throckmorton. Those are Texas Live Oaks (Quercus fusiformis). This is the fourth time I have stopped here and taken a photo. I love this spot!
My first time here in 2005 was a wonderful experience. I had never seen anything quite like this before and it was my first trip across northern Texas.
Next in was on to Haskell with its beautiful courthouse and then to Aspermont with its hideous looking courthouse.
I had hoped to take a back road from Aspermont to the town of Peacock. But, as has happened more than one time, I could not locate the turn off.
More interesting Towns of Texas tidbits from the Texas Online Encyclopedia:
Peacock, on Farm Road 2211 in west central Stonewall County, was developed by the Stamford and Northwestern Railway in 1909 and originally called Alluvia. In 1910 it took the name of J. W. Peacock, the first postmaster, who moved his store one mile south from Lingo to the town site. By 1910 Peacock had a school, a gin, a store, a church, a bank, and 100 people. G. A. Gray sold many of the lots for businesses and residences. A tornado devastated the town's business buildings in 1914.
Although the wind was strong enough to blow feathers off chickens, all but two residents avoided injuries by seeking cover in storm cellars. The population of Peacock reached 350 in 1920. In 1940 the town had 216 residents, a school, two churches, and eight businesses. The school closed in 1964, and by 1980 the population had fallen to 125, although the town still had a post office, a store, a gas station, a gin, and a blacksmith shop. The population was still recorded at 125 through 2000.
I missed Peacock but I did go through Swenson (pop. 185) and the town of Jayton. Jayton is at the intersection of SR 70 and US 380. Both are major highways. But it was not always so. In May 1919 the following letter was received and published by the Aspermont Star:
"All autoist travelers are hereby advised if possible to dodge Stonewall County owing to conditions and customs prevailing there. The road between Peacock and Jayton is very bad. There is no crossing at the Brazos River, and no attempt being made to fix one. It will cost you $1.00 to be pulled over by teams, besides damaging your car. There is graft also in being pulled through the sand. Unless compelled to go through Stonewall County, better dodge it".
About 15 miles west of Jayton at the intersection of 380 and 208 is the ghost town of Clairemont.
Clairemont is at the intersection of U.S. Highway 380 and State Highway 208, fourteen miles southwest of Jayton and forty-three miles east of Post in central Kent County. The site was established as the county seat on land owned by R. L. Rhomberg when Kent County was organized in 1892.
The town was named for Claire Becker, a relative of Rhomberg. A post office was established in December 1892 with Loulah Posey as postmistress. A courthouse and jail were constructed from local red sandstone and completed in 1895. By that time the town had several stores, a bank, a newspaper, and a hotel.Although several families lived in the area in the late 1980s, the sole resident of Clairemont was Margie (Ma) Hart. She operated the only remaining store—nicknamed the "Buzzer Den" for an earlier rash of rattlesnakes—which had become a popular local gathering place. In 1990 and 2000 the population of Clairemont was recorded as fifteen.
This Google maps image shows what is left of Clairemont.
The former Kent County courthouse still stands today.
By the 1950s the town had begun a steady decline and by 1954 had lost its title as county seat to nearby Jayton. The Clairemont courthouse burned shortly after the records were transferred to Jayton, but the bottom story was preserved as a community center. The remaining citizens soon began to move away, and the population dwindled to about 15 by the 2000s. WikiPedia
In the background is the old jail house.
The Kent County courthouse as it looked in 1939. The Courthouse burned on April 12, 1955, at about 9:00pm - 9:30pm. The second floor was destroyed by the fire.
Named after Alamo defender Andrew Kent, the county was organized in 1892. A land dealer named R.L. Rhomberg donated a town site for a county seat named in honor of a young family member, Claire Becker.
A two-story courthouse with an attic and copula became the hub of a new community that soon featured all the amenities, from general store to post office to livery stable. - by Mike Cox
Source: ©1998-2007. Texas Escapes
This marker was placed in 1982 to honor the pioneers of Kent County.
Over 115 years old, the jail house still stands today in November 2011. I imagine a jail break out of this small fortress would have been nearly impossible.
Inside the jail house stands the old strap steel confinement area. As I recall there were 6 cells. Near the jail entrance there was a room on the left which may have been where the jailer was stationed.
No getting out of this cell with a hack saw!
As expected, the local riff-raff has trashed the place. Fortunately, there is nothing here which could be destroyed by being broken. It is all steel and sandstone block.
This is the bleak view of the outside world you would have had if incarcerated here. Imagine sitting here for days, weeks or even months until your trial. Grim.
Photo courtesy Noel Kerns, September 2007
I was lucky to stumble upon the cool photography of Noel Kerns: . He has specialized in Nocturnal Photography.
Noel has more photos at his site: Texas Ghost Towns By Night. Check it out for some interesting shots of Texas after nightfall.
At 3:30 Central, I arrived at my destination, Post.
I was shocked at the amount of traffic going through this town. Especially truck traffic. It was non-stop until late evening when it finally thinned out and quieted down. I imagine some of the auto traffic was people heading home after the Thanksgiving weekend holiday.
I checked into a motel, unpacked and took a walk at the outskirts of town to get the kinks worked out from sitting all day in the van. I then took a walk down memory lane by revisiting downtown and then went to the site where I had my encounter with the local sheriff's department back in 2005. That was interesting - to say the least.
You can read about what happened here.
The next morning I was up bright and early and on the road to Carlsbad by 6:30. I stayed on US 380 and went through the small towns of Tahoka (30 miles due south of Lubbock), the ghost town of West Point, and Brownfield. Brownfield is in the heart of Texas cotton country and the fields cover many square miles of the Texas South Plains.
The above Google image shows the Brownsfield Texas area. All those little circles are cotton fields which use center pivot irrigation. All that water is pumped out of the Ogallala aquifer. This vast aquifer covers nearly 174,000 square miles and 8 states.
Note the depth of the aquifer in Nebraska. This is the area where TransCanada plans to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline. As you can imagine this has created a lot of heated debate about possible problems with oil spills.
The vast Sandhills in the northwest region of the state are home to more cattle than people. Beneath the grass-covered dunes is the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies about 80 percent of Nebraska's water for drinking and irrigation.
Concerns over a pipeline carrying 700,000 barrels of oil a day through the aquifer have produced an unlikely coalition against it.
"You have conservative farmers and ranchers, you have progressive environmentalists, you have independents who care about eminent domain and private individual property rights," says Jane Kleeb, who helps coordinate the opposition.
The pipeline company, TransCanada, promises state-of-the-art safety systems. It complains that nearly three years into the federal approval process, it would now be impossible to change the pipeline's route. TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard says opponents are just being unrealistic.
Source: © 2011 National Public Radio
The Brownfield, TX area receives only 18 inches of rainfall a year and the high temperatures are in the 80s and 90s from May to September. In other words the area of Brownsfield and the Texas South Plains has hot, dry summers.
Without vast quantities of cheap water, cotton production would not be possible in this area. Or, for that matter, most areas of the world. And, cotton requires more than water for the yields which are required to turn a profit for the planters.
Although only 2.4% of the world's cropland is planted with cotton, it accounts for 24% of the world’s insecticide market and 11% of sale of global pesticides. 73% of global cotton harvest comes from areas under irrigation.
It can take more than 20,000 litres (5,283 gallons) of water to produce 1kg (1 kilogram = 2.2 pounds) of cotton; equivalent to a single T-shirt and pair of jeans. 73% of global cotton harvest comes from irrigated land (as documented in the WWF report The Impact of Cotton on Freshwater Resources and Ecosystems).
Source: World Wildlife Fund
I left the Brownfield area and headed south on US 62 towards Seminole and saw more cotton fields which were now in the southern limits of the Ogallala aquifer. Along the way I passed through the tiny town of Wellman, population 203.
"The per capita income for the city was $15,757. About 18.8% of families and 22.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 34.9% of those under the age of eighteen and 13.3% of those sixty five or over." - WikiPedia
The above statistics from WikiPedia are ones that I saw time and time again when reading up on the towns I passed through in northern Texas.
A few more miles down US 62 I passed through Seagraves. I saw two signs which caught my eye as I drove through town. One said "Pillows Dixie Dog" and the other said simply "Historic Hotel". I could find no information about the Pillows place but the hotel turned out to be The Simpson Inn. It was built in 1917 and was originally named the "Hotel Texan". Now it is a boutique hotel. The Hotel was awarded a Texas Historical Commission Medallion in 1992.
Seagraves is the site of a carbon black plant which was funded by the Defense Plant Organization during WWII. This agency furnished money to build needed plants, called Plancors. Plancor was a code word for sites with mineral assets of value to the war effort. Early in 1948 the War Assets Administration sold a channel-type plant at Seagraves, Tex., to the Columbian Carbon Co. for $1,420,000. This plant cost $2,226,179 and was considered one of the best equipped of the Government's wartime carbon-black projects.
Carbon black is a material produced by the incomplete combustion of heavy petroleum products such as FCC tar, coal tar, ethylene cracking tar, and a small amount from vegetable oil. Carbon black is a form of amorphous carbon that has a high surface-area-to-volume ratio, although its surface-area-to-volume ratio is low compared to that of activated carbon. It is dissimilar to soot in its much higher surface-area-to-volume ratio and significantly lower (negligible and non-bioavailable) PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon) content. Carbon black is used as a pigment and reinforcement in rubber and plastic products.
Source: WikiPedia
I found a couple of interesting accounts about the Carbon Black in Texas:
Carbon Black Industry Lea County Family and History, 'Then and Now' Vol II
Carbon Black Industry: The Handbook of Texas Online
I found no information on the current status of a carbon black plant in Seagraves. And, indeed it may be closed. There is a carbon black plant in Borger, TX which The Center for Land Use Interpretation describes as:
" One of the few remaining carbon black plants in Texas, this facility is actually two adjacent plants operated by separate companies, the Sid Richardson Carbon Company and Evonik."
All this info about carbon black fired a brain synapse and it brought to mind an NPR piece I remembered hearing entitled " Oklahoma Town Battles Powdery Carbon Pollution". Ponca City is home to the 3rd largest carbon black plant in the U.S.
It was a piece about the how the citizens of Ponca City, OK battled giant Continental Carbon in an effort to get them to curb the release of carbon black into the air. This resulted in a 10.5 million dollar settlement against Continental Carbon.
The Ponca Tribe recently celebrated a $10.5 million dollar settlement it reached with the Continental Carbon Company, which the tribe and individual tribal members had sued for damages caused by black dust created during years of the company’s carbon black plant operations in Ponca City, Oklahoma. - © 1999 - 2011 Lannan Foundation
Moving on down US 62/385 I was in the town of Seminole in no time. It is at the crossroads of US 180 and US 62/385.
Seminole boasts it is " Number one in Peanuts, Cotton and Oil." Barrett Potato Farms also still has a presence there. Once again, no peanuts, cotton or 'taters without all that cheap Ogallala Aquifer water.
Leaving Seminole I picked up US 180 west and hit the New Mexico border about 25 miles later. In just 3 short miles I was in Hobbs, New Mexico. I stopped at a rest area, used the facilities and also set my clock back an hour. I was now in the Mountain time zone.
Hobbs was built on oil as this brief history of Hobbs NM will attest. There are also lots of great old photos at http://www.hobbshistory.com/
Leaving Hobbs behind I started the 90 mile drive to Carlsbad. I also left the Ogallala Aquifer behind and the landscape was now devoid of any irrigation equipment. Instead I was seeing mining equipment.
Carlsbad is home to Intrepid Potash. Which according to them they are
"committed to developing new, unique, environmentally friendly and efficient ways of profitably extracting mineral resources."
Mosaic Company also has Potash mines here.
Mosaic is the world's leading producer and marketer of concentrated phosphate and potash, two of the primary nutrients required to grow the food the world needs. Our business engages in every phase of crop nutrition development, from the mining of resources to the production of crop nutrients, feed and industrial products for customers around the globe. Our customer base includes wholesalers, retail dealers and individual growers in more than 40 countries. - Mosaic
The above Google image shows the area to the east of Carlsbad which is represented by the marker.
In the upper right of the image can be seen the last of the Gifts of the Ogallala Aquifer.
Just to the north and east of Carlsbad are the potash mines. They are the white areas.
Now, in the lower right section of the image there is an area that looks "wind blown". Below is a closer look at that area.
Geologic? Man made? Very curious. If you have any idea on what created this land form I would like to hear from you.
Also in this Google image are what appear to be thousands of white dots. These are oil wells with walking beam pumps. They wells are connected by a spider web of 1000s of miles of road. All the wells are connected to a central collection pipe and are automated by computers from a central location. They will start and stop without warning and it is an odd thing to witness.
In 2005 I took the above photo of a walking beam pump on my first trip across northern Texas
I rolled into downtown Carlsbad at about 9:00 am. Now I was ready for some breakfast and a hike in the 'Lupes.
Bye, bye for now...
~ FINIS ~