County Named for Texas Confederate Senator W. S. Oldham 1813-1868

Oldham did not stay in the country whose defeat ended his Senate seat. With the end of the war he went into exile, living for a time in Mexico and then in Canada, where he learned photography and began a book about the Confederacy; part of the unfinished manuscript ran after his death in De Bow's Monthly Review in 1869 and 1870 as "Last Days of the Confederacy." He returned to Texas in 1866 to live in Houston, died of typhoid fever on May 8, 1868, and was reburied at Eagle Lake in 1938.

What the plaque says

County Named for Texas Confederate Senator W. S. Oldham 1813-1868 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.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Magnolia Station, Vega — steps away
  A restored 1920s Magnolia filling station on Vega's Main Street, a barbershop after the pumps stopped in 1953, saved with a National Park Service grant.
• Route 66 Midpoint, Adrian — 14 mi
  The sign in Adrian that puts Chicago and Los Angeles 1,139 miles away in each direction, and across the road the 1928 cafe that took the midpoint for its name.
• Old Tascosa and the Julian Bivins Museum — 22 mi
  The 1884 stone courthouse of the Canadian River cowtown, later a ranch headquarters and the first home of Cal Farley's Boys Ranch, now a museum on the working campus.
• Cadillac Ranch — 25 mi
  Ten Cadillacs from 1949 to 1963 planted nose down in a pasture west of Amarillo by the Ant Farm collective in 1974, on private land where visitors are let in to paint them.

More markers nearby

• Home County of Doctor Oscar H. Loyd (1868-1959) — steps away
• Site of Old Tascosa — steps away
• Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail — 3.5 mi
• Palo Duro Baptist Church — 16 mi