Hollis, Oklahoma

Dodson (Dodsonville), a mile west of the Texas-Oklahoma state line in southeastern Collingsworth County, was founded in the spring of 1910 by Frank Kell , promoter of the Wellington branch of the Wichita Falls and Northwestern Railway, and named for Elmore Dodson, who contributed a 200-acre grant of land as a bonus for the railroad. A gala celebration, complete with a picnic, marked the town's formal opening on August 29, 1910, and was attended by a trainload of people from Oklahoma. N. L. Jones built the first residence and opened a cotton gin. The first store was operated by William T. McDowell, who was also the first postmaster. R. H. Miller established a hotel, and the town added a bank, a telephone exchange, and two churches. Three newspapers, all called the Dodsonville News , were published intermittently by three different men between January 1911 and December 1915. A fourth paper, the Dodsonville Messenger , was printed from 1928 until 1930. School was sometimes held in the churches until a permanent schoolhouse was completed in the fall of 1912; the previous school was located three miles northwest of town. Dodson was incorporated in the 1920s and by 1930 had twenty-five businesses and a population of 426. Public Works Administration appropriations enabled the town to install a $52,000 water system during the 1930s, and a volunteer fire department was organized. In 1947 a new consolidated high school served neighboring communities in Oklahoma as well as Dodson. The population dropped to 357 in 1940; this decline, attributed to decreased agricultural activity and a renewed interest in cattle raising, continued into the 1990s. In 1984 Dodson remained the county's second largest town, with a population of 185, one business, and four churches. In 1990 the population was 113, and in 2000 it was 115.

In 1852, Capt. R.B. Marcy led a survey expedition along the Red River to document the river's channel and related streams. The team, which included Capt. G.B. McLellan of the Corps of Engineers, entered the Texas panhandle June 10, 1852 and arrived in what is now Collingsworth County on July 7. Traveling eastward through the southern part of the county, the team identified the sources and route of the Red River. The team left Texas north of Dodson and returned to Fort Arbuckle in present Oklahoma. Their survey later proved important in settling a boundary dispute between Texas and Oklahoma. (2006)

Kirkland, on U.S. Highway 287 in southeastern Childress County, was probably named after J. C. Kirkland, an early settler. It was originally in Hardeman County, seven miles northeast of the present site, on a stage line from Wichita Falls to Mobeetie. A stagecoach and relay station was established there in the early 1880s, and soon the community had an inn for travelers, a general store, and two saloons. When the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway came through in 1887, the residents moved the town into Childress County to the new line. The new townsite was platted by John Quincy Adams, a local homesteader, on whose land the tracks were laid. As more farmers arrived, Kirkland flourished, and by 1890 it had a mercantile store, a post office, and cattle shipping pens. The panic of 1893 temporarily retarded the town's growth, but by 1900 it was prospering once more. The Furr's Grocery and Cafeteria corporations had their beginning at Kirkland when Crone W. Furr opened his first mercantile store in 1905. Billed as the "Biggest Little City in Texas," Kirkland by the 1920s had three churches, a three-room school, and several businesses, including three grocery stores, two lumber yards, two barber shops, five filling stations, three hardware stores, and a bank. The population was 500 in 1940. Modern farming methods and improved transportation resulted in a gradual decline for Kirkland after that time, however. In 1958 its school district was consolidated with that of Childress. By 1980 only two churches and one general store remained, although three grain elevators attested to the town's role as a wheat-shipping point. Kirkland reported a population of 100 in 1984. In 1990 it was 102. The population remained the same in 2000.

The OX Ranch, in Childress County, was established about 1880 by the brothers A. and J. Forsythe from Missouri. The brand was made with two irons, a bar and an O. It had been designed sometime between 1874 and 1876 in Denton County by George Merchant, but after three or four years he sold it to the Cairns and Forsythe Brothers firm in Gainesville. W. D. Shelton was hired to survey the ranchland, which covered the southern part of Childress County and extended south into Hardeman, Cottle, and Motley counties, 19,200 acres in all. The Forsythes trailed their herds to the north and south forks of the Pease River and turned them loose to graze in that fertile area. Their headquarters, said to have been the first house built in Childress County, was located north of the Pease about six miles from the site of present Childress. Between 1880 and 1902 the ranch grazed 12,000 to 15,000 cattle on 300,000 acres. Several smaller herds were often thrown in with the Cairns and Forsythe cattle, the most important of which were the MD herd belonging to the Swearingen brothers. During the early 1880s OX cattle were driven to market over the Palo Duro-Dodge City trail. J. W. Whitehead, who resided at the OX headquarters, served as the ranch's first general manager. Pat J. Leonard served for twenty years as a range boss for the OX. Beginning in 1883 the Forsythes adopted a customary practice of filing on and gaining title to "lariat land," that is, certain sections on which ranchers would pay only a portion of the patent fee, thus ensuring themselves against any person's occupying the land. In this way the owners were able for a time to restrict the influx of nesters into their range and keep it open for grazing. All that changed, however, with the building of the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway through the OX and the organization of the county in 1887. The establishment of Childress and other rail towns compelled the OX owners to do away with grazing rights in favor of the state land laws and to fence in their pastures. Cairns seems to have sold his interest in the ranch during the 1880s, but the Forsythes held on until 1894, when they sold out to D. D. Swearingen, G. S. White, and C. R. Smith. Swearingen and White later bought out Smith, formed their own cattle company, and moved the OX headquarters south of the Pease to Swearingen. Beginning in 1905 the OX range was reduced by the sale of several tracts, some of which sold for as low as fifty-five cents an acre. Land for the 3-Bar, Buckle L, and Diamond Tail ranches was bought from the OX. During the 1920s Tom (Thomas L.) Burnett purchased 52,000 acres of former OX rangeland, including its old Dripping Springs pasture northeast of Paducah. White and Swearingen held their last big roundup in May 1925. Nevertheless, Tom and Matt Swearingen continued to run cattle and use the OX brand until about 1930. A sizable remnant of the once vast OX Ranch, located between Paducah and Swearingen, was later purchased by W. H. Portwood of Seymour and was still operated by members of that family in the mid-1980s.

The Prairie Dog Town Fork, the main tributary of the Red River, rises at the junction of Palo Duro and Tierra Blanca creeks in central Randall County, northeast of Canyon (at 35°00' N, 101°56' W). It flows 160 miles southeastward through the Palo Duro Canyon, across southwestern Armstrong and northeastern Briscoe counties, and out of the canyon and eastward across the broken country of central Hall and Childress counties, to its confluence with the North Fork of the Red River, twelve miles northeast of Vernon (at 34°24' N, 99°32' W); there the Red River proper begins. When the Prairie Dog Town Fork crosses the 100th meridian at the eastern line of Childress County, its south bank becomes the state boundary between Texas and Oklahoma and the northern county line of Hardeman and Wilbarger counties. Spaniards were the first White men to see the Prairie Dog Town Fork; in the 1780s Pedro Vial and Santiago Fernández followed it during their trading expeditions between Santa Fe and the Taovaya villages on the Red River. Randolph B. Marcy and George B. McClellan first determined it to be the main fork of the Red River after exploring it in the summer of 1852; this designation later influenced the United States Supreme Court decision to award the disputed Greer County to Oklahoma in 1896. The road in Palo Duro Canyon State Park crosses the stream five times, and campgrounds are available on the creek. Lake Tanglewood was formed in the early 1960s by a dam on the Prairie Dog Town Fork in northeastern Randall County.

The Shoe Nail Ranch was located in Childress County north of the OX Ranch . Its boundaries followed the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River and extended north. The area was first used for ranching in 1879, when Bill Curtis and Tom Atkinson brought their Diamond Tail Ranch cattle here before moving north to Collingsworth County. In July 1883 F. P. Knott of Wichita Falls, a surveyor with the Southern Pacific Railway Company, was awarded a 50,000-acre plot of company land as payment. He sold the property to the Childress County Company for $56,661. Ranch manager R. L. Ellison stocked the pasture with 2,400 head of LIZ cattle he had purchased in Throckmorton County and rebranded with the Shoe Nail. He hired John Perry as foreman and Frank Gallagher as a range boss; the ranch crew normally consisted of fifteen or sixteen cowboys. Ellison established a permanent headquarters near the south bank of the Prairie Dog Town Fork, and gradually replaced the Shoe Nail's original longhorn cattle with Hereford cattle . During the sixteen years that Ellison managed the operation, the ranch grew by 30,000 acres. In 1899 the Childress County Land and Cattle Company filed suit against a group of homesteaders who had laid claim to certain sections of Shoe Nail pasture. The homesteaders' claims were based on patents granted by the Waco and Northwestern Railroad, while the Shoe Nail claim was based on Knott's surveys for the Southern Pacific. Although the Shoe Nail retained former governor James S. Hogg as its attorney, the farmers' lawyer, a man named Diggs, was able to win the case for them. Another survey was subsequently ordered, and both sides hired surveyors. Again the court ruled in favor of the settlers, and the ranch lost about 10,000 acres. Ellison then bought out those farmers who were willing to sell and allowed the others to continue their agricultural pursuits. Later that year the Fort Worth bankers sold the Shoe Nail to Gustavus F. Swift, founder of Swift and Company , for $170,330. The new owner brought in William H. Craven to manage the ranch. Craven made the Shoe Nail into a wintering range for other Swift operations in the Panhandle by establishing a series of sixteen camps to serve as feeding lots. Under his administration the Shoe Nail branded about 8,000 calves annually, and he bought heavily from neighboring ranches. After experimenting with different breeds, Craven decided that Herefords were superior as range cattle, and improved the Shoe Nail's herds with imported Herefords. As part of that program, he hired Van Law as ranch veterinarian to spay his heifers so they could be fattened as beeves. After Gustavus Swift's death in 1903, his son Edward retained Craven, who engineered the campaign to parcel out Shoe Nail acreage to farmers and smaller ranchers. The land sold for six to fifteen dollars an acre and was all sold by 1907. The brand was subsequently used by Lewis and Chamberlain in Donley County and by John Molesworth in Hudspeth County.