Old Dewey Lake

The lake lay near the mouth of Blanco Canyon, which here reaches its widest, about six miles across, with cliffs averaging 300 to 500 feet. Upstream, at Mount Blanco, the canyon is about 250 feet deep and a mile and a half wide; at its head in Floyd County it is only some fifty feet deep. Crawfish Canyon, marked Cañón Cangrejo on some early maps, is its only major side canyon. Wayfarers of every kind camped in the canyon, and in the 1880s it drew the first settlers because water and wood were easy to find.

What the plaque says

Old Dewey Lake Once an important landmark for early surveys of this area, Dewey Lake got its name after surveyors returned from here to headquarters and found, to their embarrassment, they had not yet named this site. Gallantly, they decided to call it after land office employee Miss Dewey. Lake Shore was site of Texas Ranger Camp "Roberts" (1879-1882) and the "Stag House," barracks for the cowboys of the Two Buckle Ranch. Surveyors often camped here, too. The lake disappeared in the 1880s after two creeks eroded its shores, forming a new channel which drained the lake basin. 1968

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum — 3.6 mi
  Crosbyton's museum of Blanco Canyon, built in 1958 as a copy of Hank Smith's Rock House, and the place to learn the canyon's 1871 fight between Mackenzie's cavalry and Quanah's Quahadi Comanche.
• Spur-Dickens County Museum — 23 mi
  Dickens County's museum on the main block of Spur, a town born on November 1, 1909, when the first train reached the land a New York syndicate was selling off from the Spur Ranch.
• Motley County Historical Museum — 31 mi
  Matador's museum in the 1928 Traweek Hospital, in the county seat a Scottish-owned ranch created by having its cowboys open one-day businesses to pass a state rule.

More markers nearby

• Two-Buckle Ranch Headquarters, Kentucky Cattle Raising Company — steps away
• Texas Ranger Campsite — steps away
• Main Supply Camp on Historic Mackenzie Trail — steps away
• Battle of the Freshwater Fork of the Brazos — steps away