Home County of Famous Frontiersman J. Wright Mooar

The brother the plaque names, John Wesley Mooar, was born at Pownal, Vermont, on June 12, 1846, the Handbook of Texas says, and earned a master of accounts degree at Eastman Business College. Clerking in a New York City jewelry store in 1871, he saw the profit in buffalo hides and reached Dodge City in November 1872. In the partnership he handled the business side and supervised the freighting, and one caravan he went with delivered 4,000 hides to Denison. He later settled near Colorado City, where he owned a carriage agency, and died there on May 24, 1918.

What the plaque says

J. Wright Mooar was a champion hunter of buffalo, largest game animal in North America. A native of Vermont. He came west at age 19 and in 1870 began hunting to supply hides for market. In partnership with his brother, John W. Mooar, he established the first buffalo hunting camp in the Texas Panhandle in 1873. On October 7, 1876, at his first camp in Scurry County (2.8 miles south of this site on county road 253, near the Old Mooar Ranch headquarters) J. Wright Mooar killed a rare albino buffalo, one of two known to have been killed in Texas. The albino hide was shown at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and on many other occasions. Mooar hunted regularly until 1879. In 1881 he helped furnish game and hay to construction crews building the Texas & Pacific Railroad in West Texas. During his career, he shot about 22,000 buffalo, a record probably unsurpassed. His ability to hit a vital spot from a distance of 1,000 feet or farther won the respect of Comanche Indian Chief Quanah Parker, who became a friend in later life. The Mooar Brothers began ranching in 1877. Highly esteemed by their fellow citizens, they owned a livery stable in Colorado City from 1881 to 1905. (1967--1995)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Scurry County Museum — 12 mi
  Snyder's county museum on the Western Texas College campus, with the rifle used to shoot the white buffalo, an 1878 chuckwagon and the millionth barrel of the Canyon Reef oil boom.
• Garza County Historical Museum — 33 mi
  The county museum of Post, C. W. Post's planned town below the Caprock, kept in the stone sanitarium the town opened in 1912 as the best-equipped medical building west of Fort Worth.

More markers nearby

• Dermott — 1.9 mi
• The Block 97 Controversy — 7.6 mi
• Fluvanna — 8.8 mi
• City of Snyder — 9.3 mi