Doan's Crossing

In 1878 Jonathan Doan and his nephew Corwin opened a trading post a mile from the Red River in the north of Wilbarger County. The herds coming up the Western Trail from Fort Griffin and the Pease crossed the river here, and for drovers the store was the last chance for mail and supplies before Indian Territory. A post office opened in 1879 with Corwin Doan as postmaster. By the mid-1880s Doans had a school, a hotel, a general store, a saloon and about 300 people, and the trade brought cowboys, ranchers, buffalo hunters, peddlers, preachers and Native visitors, Quanah Parker among them.

It did not last. In 1885 the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway passed several miles south, and with the railheads the drives that kept the place alive dried up. The population fell to 75 by the mid-1890s and 30 by 1914, the post office closed in 1919, and by the 1930s about ten people lived there.

What remains is the adobe house the Doans built at the crossing, a granite monument carved with the brands of the outfits that crossed, and a state marker placed in 1931. The picnic is the living part. It began in 1884 and is held each May at the old store site, the oldest continuing event in Texas according to the Texas Historical Commission.