Eldridge Post Office

Alanreed, where the Eldridge office finally landed, went by several names before it settled on one. Settlers called the place Springtown or Spring Tank for a large spring-fed tank, Prairie Dog Town for a dog town nearby, and Gouge Eye after a saloon fight. A surveyor for the Choctaw, Oklahoma and Texas Railroad laid out the present townsite in 1900, and the name reputedly came from the contracting firm of Alan and Reed. By 1904 it was the largest town in Gray County, and it shipped an average of 500 carloads of watermelons a year.

What the plaque says

Eldridge Post Office The first post office in Gray County, Eldridge was established on March 20, 1886. The locality was first called Elfin Grove, but the post office was never known by that name. The new facility spared area ranchers a 20-mile ride to Mobeetie to pick up mail. Eldridge Post Office moved in 1888 one mile north of its original site to a spot 1/2 mile west of this location. It stood near a blacksmith shop on McClellan Creek. About 1902 the post office moved several miles south to the railroad, where Eldridge became Alanreed. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Phillips 66 Station, McLean — 10 mi
  A 1929 cottage-style Phillips 66 station on First Street in McLean, the town I-40 went around last and whose Route 66 business district stayed much as it was.
• Devil's Rope and Old Route 66 Museum — 10 mi
  Barbed wire and the Texas road in McLean's old brassiere factory: the fence that closed the open range, from the salesmen who sold it to the Panhandle ranches it divided.
• Woody Guthrie Folk Music Center — 20 mi
  The old Harris Drug Store in Pampa, where a young Woody Guthrie jerked sodas and found his first guitar, now a folk music center with Friday night jam sessions.
• White Deer Land Museum — 20 mi
  The 1916 Pampa office of the land company that sold a foreclosed British ranch to wheat farmers, with an annex holding one of the Panhandle's largest Red River War collections.

More markers nearby

• Indian Battlefield — 7.8 mi
• George B. McClellan — 7.9 mi
• McLean Methodist Church — 10 mi
• Big Springs — 11 mi