Oldham County

When Oldham County organized in 1880, its government reached far beyond its own lines. Tascosa became the seat, Caleb B. (Cape) Willingham the first sheriff, C. B. Vivian the county clerk and William S. Mabry the surveyor, and sixteen unorganized Panhandle counties were attached to Oldham for administration. Its 287 people that year made it the second most populous county in the Panhandle, after Wheeler. Hispanic settlers outnumbered Anglo-Americans for a time, until W. M. D. Lee and his partners bought out many of the pastores and replaced their sheep with cattle.

What the plaque says

Oldham County Formed from Young and Bexar territories. Created August 21, 1876. Organized January 12, 1881. Named in honor of Williamson Simpson Oldham 1813-1868; Arkansas lawyer and jurist; member of the Confederate Senate from Texas. County seat, Tascosa, 1881; Vega, since 1915

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Tascosa and the Julian Bivins Museum — 0.6 mi
  The 1884 stone courthouse of the Canadian River cowtown, later a ranch headquarters and the first home of Cal Farley's Boys Ranch, now a museum on the working campus.
• Magnolia Station, Vega — 22 mi
  A restored 1920s Magnolia filling station on Vega's Main Street, a barbershop after the pumps stopped in 1953, saved with a National Park Service grant.
• Window on the Plains Museum — 27 mi
  Moore County's free museum on the Dumas highway, telling an industrial Panhandle of zinc smelters, helium and gas plants alongside the farm and ranch rooms.
• Cadillac Ranch — 29 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.

More markers nearby

• The Historic LS — steps away
• Old Tascosa — steps away
• Boot Hill Cemetery — 0.3 mi
• Tascosa — 0.6 mi