The D. S. Dudley Show

Mankins began as a rail spur. In 1890 the Wichita Valley Railway ran a line to Sam Lazarus's ranch headquarters, and the settlement was called Lazarus Switch. Charles Mangold bought the ranch in 1908, built a store and a small hotel and laid out a townsite where his foreman, Tom Mankins, lived; the post office opened in 1909 under Mankins's name. A 1938 tornado razed the brick school that also served as church and community center. The post office closed about 1963, and growth was slowed because the Mangold estate still owned the town lots.

What the plaque says

Founded in late 19th or early 20th century as a wild west circus, the D. S. Dudley Show has been chief industry in Mankins for over half a century. Dick "Cheyenne" Dudley (born in 1896), a prize-winning bronc rider, bought the show in 1914, interrupted his career to serve overseas in the U.S. Army in World War I, came back and married Ruth Wolf of Mankins. Together they toured the Southwest with the show 8 months of the year, employing as many as 250 people, wintering here with their exotic animals. Younger generations of their family continue with the show. (1974)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Royal Theater — 16 mi
  Archer City's movie house, burned in 1965, given a false front for The Last Picture Show and brought back by the town in the 1990s as a working stage on Main Street.
• Kell House Museum — 19 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 20 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 23 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.

More markers nearby

• KMA Oilfield — 5.3 mi
• Maggie and Herod "Pap" Simpson — 6.3 mi
• First Methodist Church of Holliday — 6.3 mi
• Van Dorn Trail — 6.4 mi