Melissa Dora Oliver-Eakle

Amarillo called her the Duchess. She arrived in 1895 with fine horses, a carriage and household servants said to be the town's first Black residents, and her fortune was said to exceed the combined capital of all the area banks. Because a woman lender was unusual, she lent as M. D. Oliver, and borrowers rarely knew who held their notes. Her stand against liquor drew kidnapping and extortion attempts by Chicago mobsters, after which she carried a revolver in her purse. She died in El Paso in 1931, and area newspapers reported her death for four days.

What the plaque says

Melissa Dora Oliver-Eakle A descendant of two prominent 17th-century families in Virginia and Georgia, Melissa Dora Callaway (1860-1931) was a graduate of Georgia Female College. In 1884, she married industrialist Capt. William Oliver. Following his death, she visited her brothers in Amarillo in 1889, purchased land in Potter and Randall Counties in 1890, and in 1895 moved to the frontier town of Amarillo. Mrs. Oliver's personal fortune allowed her to invest in the town at a time when money was sorely needed for its growth. She developed part of her landholdings into the subdivision in which Amarillo College and Memorial Park are located. In 1902, she married O.M. Eakle (d. 1914) and was known thereafter as Mrs. M.D. Oliver-Eakle. A lover of opera and classical literature, Mrs. Oliver-Eakle assisted in establishing the first library, helped finance the Amarillo Opera House and sponsored the local temperance movement. In 1927, she completed Amarillo's first skyscraper, a ten-story office building. Remembered for her significant cultural contributions, business achievements, and as one of the city's largest taxpayers during a time when women experienced difficulty with involvement in the financial world. Mrs. Oliver-Eakle is buried in Amarillo's Llano Cemetery. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Route 66 Sixth Street Historic District — 2.4 mi
  Thirteen blocks of Amarillo's streetcar suburb that Route 66 turned into a roadside strip, from the 1922 Nat to Texaco, Phillips and Dutch Mill stations, now shops and bars.
• Helium Centennial Time Columns Monument — 4.2 mi
  Four sealed time capsules raised in Amarillo in 1968 for helium's centennial, in the city that for years produced almost all the world's commercial helium from the Cliffside field.
• Cadillac Ranch — 8.2 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.
• Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — 15 mi
  The Panhandle's great collection, some two million objects behind a 1933 Art Deco hall carved with cattle brands, closed to the public since March 2025 over fire-safety violations.

More markers nearby

• Llano Cemetery — 0.6 mi
• Polk Street Schools — 1.2 mi
• Self Sacrifice of Padre Fray Juan de Padilla - 1544 — 1.4 mi
• St. Mary's Academy — 1.4 mi