W. P. Soash, Colonizer

Soash was born in Butler County, Iowa, in 1877, lost his mother at six and moved from place to place with his father, a railroad contractor, working later as a carpenter and a deputy United States marshal. He learned colonizing in the Dakotas before founding his own company in 1905, which grew to offices in more than eight states. He sold land with a company magazine, The Golden West, and excursion trains to the land itself. After the Texas collapse he served as a cavalry lieutenant in World War I and later sold land with the Slaughters.

What the plaque says

W. P. Soash, Colonizer Land promoter W. P. Soash (1877-1961) of Iowa came (1905) to Texas to sell parcels of XIT Ranch land. He founded the towns of Ware in Dallam County and Olton in Lamb County. He platted Soash (1 mi. N) on part of C. C. Slaughter's Long S Ranch in 1909 and brought trainloads of farmers from the East and Midwest to settle this area. The town flourished, but his proposed Gulf, Soash & Pacific Railroad failed when the Santa Fe Line was extended. A four-year drought soon caused Soash to decline. In the 1970s, only the shell of the bank building remained to mark the original townsite. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hotel Settles — 20 mi
  Big Spring's fifteen-story hotel of 1930, built on ranch oil money, once the tallest building between Fort Worth and El Paso, empty and roosted in by pigeons for decades and now restored.
• Hangar 25 Air Museum — 21 mi
  A restored World War II hangar on the old air base above Big Spring, telling the story of the bombardier school of 1942 and of Webb Air Force Base, which trained pilots until 1977.
• Big Spring State Park — 21 mi
  A CCC drive looping up Scenic Mountain, a 200-foot bluff above the town that grew around the only dependable spring within sixty miles of open Llano country.

More markers nearby

• Masonic Cemetery — 19 mi
• The J. & W. Fisher Company — 20 mi
• Howard County — 20 mi
• First National Bank in Big Spring — 20 mi