This Must Be the
Place!
TEXOLA, Beckham Co.
By
Gary B Speck
Every Ghost
Town is
unique. Each town or site has its own
personality. Some places have been
erased from the map, while others hang out the touristy glitz in a loud,
boastful and self-assertive way. Then
there’re others that aren’t afraid to display their uniqueness to the world in
their own quiet, unassuming way. Texola, Oklahoma is
one of the later. Zipping east from Texas to Oklahoma on I-40, we hit the
transition from one state to another, as well as from the West to the Midwest.
Crossing the 100th Meridian at the state line happens in a
non-eventful blink.
Just east of the state line and less than a
mile to the south, a tall water tower breaks up the great flatness of western
Oklahoma. Trees and rooftops call out to the curious, and since 1975, this
faded town has had to rely on the curious.
PRE I-40 it was a major stop on Route 66, but when the Interstate
opened, bypassing the town, it died faster than an unwatered
lawn in the desert.
Because this town sits practically right on
the imaginary line called the 100th Meridian as well as the state
line, confusion reigned until it was firmly planted. Residents changed their addresses from Texas
to Oklahoma Territory and back on a regular basis, all without even having to
move their houses. After eight surveys,
the surveyors dragging their chains and transits through the countryside
finally determined exactly where the state/territorial line/100th
Meridian actually was. Texola WAS in Oklahoma.
When we arrived in town, the first building
we spotted was a bar with a wonderful, verbal, black
on yellow mural painted on the side. It aptly describes this unique, nearly
dead town”
.
“There’s no other place
like this place
anywhere near this place
so this must be the place.”
The Choctaw, Oklahoma and Gulf Railroad (a
subsidiary of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway – CRI&P)
established Texola around 1901 or 1902. A post office
opened in the budding railroad town in December 1901, and by the time Oklahoma
became a state in 1907, both the town and post office had had tried out a
number of name combinations to celebrate its unique position. TEXOKLA
and TEXOMA didn’t work, and when
they tried TEXOLA it seemed to fit
perfectly. Texola grew quickly and incorporated. In 1910, 361 folks lived here, but that
decreased slightly to 298 in time for the 1920 enumeration.
When US Highway 66 came through in 1928, it
skirted the southern edge of downtown, about 1˝ blocks south of the
railroad. Traveler amenities popped up
along the new highway, which ran perpendicular to the main business block,
Grand Avenue. Texola
was at its prime and saw its population nearly double to 581 in 1930. However, the 1930s and the Great Depression
were not kind. Even though Texola sat on Route 66, the population started slipping;
not just because of the economy, but also because of two larger towns located
nearby. Erick sits just seven miles
east, while Shamrock, Texas is plopped down 14 miles to the west. As they were larger, they were able to offer
the traveler more. In 1930, Erick
tallied 2231 folks, while Shamrock tipped the pop-o-meter at 3778.
As time rolled further from 1930, Texola’s population continued to decline. By 1990 it reached 45, and by 2000 that had
actually increased – to 47. In 2010, the
downward spiral continued, with only 36 folks counted. In that census, Erick
still tallied a tad over 1000, while Shamrock came in just shy of 2000. Both
continue sucking what little bit of remaining life remained in poor little Texola.
During the 1920s-early 1930s, Texola looked far different than it does today. Its businesses included a 300-seat
auditorium, bank, blacksmith, four churches, corn & grist mill, four cotton
gins, gas stations, a couple of general stores, a hardware store, three hotels,
a tiny jail, livery, meat market, a weekly newspaper (Texola
Herald), a ten-acre park, the post office, railroad station and two
restaurants. Cotton and corn raised in the area was shipped regularly to market
via the CRI&P Railroad.
Our visit to Texola
on June 21, 2012 was not pre-planned. It
was another of my famously random, let’s-see-what’s-there type stops. We were only a little over a half-hour east
of our previous stop at Alanreed, Texas and hadn’t
even got settled into our driving routine when the Ghost Town Express took on a
mind of its own and pointed its nose down the offramp
at EXIT 176, onto TX-30 Spur onto the eastbound service road paralleling the
freeway. About a mile later, the spur
road widened, swung to the southeast and opened up into a wide, divided
four-lane, that until 1975, served thousands of vehicles daily. Once graced with billboards and US 66
signposts, it is now decorated only with native greenery, faded signage and no
traffic. Just west of Texola we crossed the state line into a truly dead town
filled with dead buildings.
The first structure of note, The Hitching
Post, sat along the south side of the former highway greeting us with “NO
TRESPASSING” and “POSTED” signs. We
pulled over onto the gravel parking area and seven eager explorers hit the
ground, keeping a respectful distance away from the building. The rock wainscoting, corrugated, multi-hued
tin canopy, rusty pole sign and the boarded windows gave off a vibe of
non-use. BUT. Decorative lights and beer signs on the walls
tried to refute that. I say tried, because the truth was painted on
a faded sign on the upper parapet. A
“Grand Opening” was going to occur on September 16 and 17. No year was
indicated. However, in 2012, those dates
were a Sunday and Monday – NOT the best nights for a bar grand opening. In
2011, those were a Friday and Saturday, so I think the grand opening didn’t
last long. Unfortunately there was no
one around to ask.
Just a few-score yards to the east, the
“Watering Hole #2” did look active, the bright blue-muraled
front of a beige, false-fronted, stucco building fronting a gravel parking lot
with no weeds – a sure sign of either good groundskeeping
(which I doubt) or activity. Because of
our visitation time in the late morning, it was not physically open, and again,
there was no one around to ask.
Leaving the ghost town barhopping behind,
we reboarded the Ghost Town Express, and continued
east into the center of what was once the main part of town. Empty buildings lie scattered along the road,
while foundations and slabs punctuate the scenery remain where others once
stood. This was once a good sized town,
what remains is a real treat. We could see an old brick store building, a
couple gas stations, automobile repair garages, a café, a roofless church,
abandoned homes and a jail, as well as a handful of other unidentified
buildings.
This is a town with more gaps than
buildings, more memories than reality more quiet than sounds of a living
community. There were no dogs
barking. No kids playing under the shade
trees sheltering windowless houses. No sound of uplifting praise music wafting
from the glassless windows of the church’s roofless concrete shell. No clinks of coinage in the tills of the
long-gone cash registers. No longer do
the expansion joints on Route 66 reverberate with the sound of tires. No puttering engines from Ford Model A’s,
Chevy Business Coupes and Dodge Brothers touring sedans are heard at once-busy
gas stations and garages. No longer do the now-forgotten, grunting mechanics
pry flattened tires off wood-spoked rims. The scattered remains of Texola
are gripped in an eerie silence.
Where 1930s-era tourists once stopped to
eat at the Longhorn Trading Post, top up the Tin Lizzie’s gas tank at the
Texaco station, or pick up munchies from the grocery store, only dust, cobwebs
and dead air remain. Bustling commerce
has been silenced, replaced by dried weeds, unpainted wood and crumbling
buildings. The CRI&P Railroad is
gone, the pulled and scrapped sometime shortly after 1980 when the company
folded. The post office was discontinued
September 5, 2009, after a near-108 year run. Life as it was known here is pfft! The downward
spiral is nearly complete. Only a tiny
handful of folks remain to keep away the ghosts.
To the
north, up Grand Avenue, I-40 can be accessed.
On that road, just north of the one-time downtown, the empty-windowed
hulk of a large brick building peeks through a thick copse of trees. Because of rain and with no safe and solid
place to park, we just had to view it as we passed by. As we reentered the freeway, I said a fond
goodbye to this wonderful little Oklahoma ghost. Like the sign says:
“There’s no other place
like this place
anywhere near this place
so this must be the place.”
This was our Ghost
Town of the Month for February 2014.
LOCATION
· S-Ctr Sec 30, N-Ctr Sec 31, T9N, R26W, Indian Base Line & Meridian
· Latitude: 35.2192194 / 35° 13’ 09” N
· Longitude: -99.9912189 / 99° 59’ 28” W
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towns in Oklahoma
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FIRST POSTED: February 08,
2014
LAST UPDATED: March 10, 2014
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