Home County of Doctor Oscar H. Loyd (1868-1959)

Loyd arrived as Vega was being built. Ranchers Pat and John Landergin bought part of the LS in 1907 and, with the Pool Land Company of Amarillo, brought in settlers; they founded a bank in 1908, and when the Rock Island was finished in 1909 the town boomed with stores, churches, a hotel and the Vega Sentinel. Vega won the county seat from Tascosa in 1915 after a five-year fight and incorporated in 1927. A 1931 fire that destroyed six buildings led to a city water system, and tourist courts on US 66 strengthened the town's economy.

What the plaque says

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. (1966)

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

• County Named for Texas Confederate Senator W. S. Oldham 1813-1868 — steps away
• Site of Old Tascosa — steps away
• Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail — 3.5 mi
• Palo Duro Baptist Church — 16 mi