Dr. Charles L. Fields

When Fields came to Canadian in 1903, Texas had required dentists to hold a license for fourteen years. The Texas Dental Association set up a committee on dental law in May 1882, and after seven years of negotiation the legislature adopted licensing on March 27, 1889: each candidate faced an examination by three reputable dentists appointed by the presiding judge of a judicial district. Since 1905 the Board of Dental Examiners has had more than three members, all named by the governor, and that year the state's first dental schools opened in Houston and Dallas.

What the plaque says

Dr. Charles L. Fields (1858-1941) Prominent pioneer dentist and farmer. As a boy, cut wood to support mother widowed in Civil War. Worked as carpenter for money to attend dental school in Chicago. Licensed 1890. Came to Canadian in 1903; Groom, 1916. Traveled at times to ranch headquarters and to Ochiltree and Mobeetie, to patients unable to go to him. Often had to ford rivers, hauling his collapsible dental chair and foot-powered drill. Used iodine and laudanum as antiseptics and pain-killers. Operated his own denture lab. Met large demand for gold teeth. Often was paid in beef, produce. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight Ranch State Historic Site — 13 mi
  The two-story house the Goodnights moved into on December 27, 1887, after leaving the JA, with a porch that looks over bison descended from the calves Mary Ann saved.
• Gem Theatre — 16 mi
  Claude's small-town movie house of 1915, restored by the Armstrong County Museum and remembered for the scene in Hud where Homer and Lonnie Bannon sing along to Clementine.
• Carson County Square House Museum — 18 mi
  The 1880s ranch cottage that is the oldest house in the town of Panhandle, at the heart of a twenty-one-building museum of the plains from mammoth hunters to the oil boom.
• Donley County Courthouse — 22 mi
  Bulger and Rapp's red brick and white stone courthouse of 1891, the oldest in use in the Panhandle, given back its third floor and towers in a 2003 restoration.

More markers nearby

• State National Bank — steps away
• Groom — steps away
• Site of Old Goodnight College — 12 mi
• Town of Goodnight — 12 mi