The River That Started a War Over Oil RoadyGoat

1919

The Red River is not like most borders. Most state lines are surveyed and fixed. The Red River moves. It floods, shifts course, carves new channels, and abandons old ones. For decades nobody cared much about which side of the river owned the muddy bottomland. Then in 1919, Texas drillers struck oil in the riverbed near Burkburnett, and suddenly the exact location of the border was worth millions. Texas claimed the border ran along the middle of the river. Oklahoma claimed the border was the south bank, meaning Oklahoma owned the entire riverbed. The federal government stepped in and claimed the south half belonged to the United States as trustee for the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations, whose treaty lands originally included the riverbed. Three sovereigns, one muddy river, and a fortune in oil underneath it. The Supreme Court spent four years sorting it out. In 1923, the Court ruled that the border followed the south bank as cut by normal water flow, giving Oklahoma the riverbed. Texas kept the oil wells on the floodplain south of the bank. The federal government got the south half in trust for the tribes. It was one of the most complicated boundary decisions in American history, and the river has kept moving ever since.

7.5 mi away

America's Medal of Honor Host City RoadyGoat

2001

Of all the towns in America, only one has made itself the official home for the nation's living Medal of Honor recipients. Since 2001, Gainesville has run the country's Medal of Honor Host City Program, the only initiative of its kind. Every April the city welcomes recipients as honored guests, then celebrates them with a formal banquet and a full citywide parade. Over the years the program has hosted the overwhelming majority of the nation's living recipients, an extraordinary reach for a town of roughly sixteen thousand people. The commitment earned Gainesville national recognition in 2012, when a Rand McNally survey named it the Most Patriotic Small Town in America. For a place built by cattle drivers and circus amateurs, it became a stage for the country's highest honor.

11.2 mi away

The Depot, the Harvey House, and Tower 164 RoadyGoat

1887

The red-brick Santa Fe Depot on East California Street was built in 1902 by the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway, replacing a smaller frame station from the 1890s. Its ground floor held a Harvey House, part of the famous chain of railroad restaurants, which ran here until 1931. Because the Santa Fe line crossed the older Katy railroad in Gainesville, the two met at a busy junction. In 1931 an interlocking plant, Tower 164, was installed to govern that crossing. An interlocker is a signal-and-switch system engineered so conflicting train routes physically cannot be lined up at once, preventing collisions. During World War Two, traffic to nearby Camp Howze made Gainesville the eighth-busiest station on the entire Santa Fe in 1944. The depot joined the National Register in 1983 and still serves Amtrak's Heartland Flyer.

11.2 mi away

Site of Camp Howze

1942

(One mile west) In operation from 1942 to 1946, Camp Howze served as an infantry training facility during World War II. It was named for General Robert Lee Howze (1864-1926), a native Texan whose distinguished career in the United States Army began with his graduation from West Point and included service in France, Puerto Rico, Germany, a South Dakota Indian War and the Philippine Insurrection, 1899-1902. Clifford McMahon of the Gainesville Chamber of Commerce first contacted federal authorities with the idea of establishing a military installation here. Attracted by the community's active endorsement of the plan, the government activated Camp Howze on August 17, 1942, under the command of Colonel John P. Wheeler. In addition to infantry training, the base was also the site of a German prisoner of war camp and an air support command base, now part of the Gainesville Municipal Airport. Services provided for the soldiers included camp exchanges, libraries, chapels, theaters, service clubs and a base newspaper, the "Camp Howze Howitzer." The economic and social impact of Camp Howze on Gainesville was significant and was instrumental in the town's rapid growth and development. (1982)

Historical Marker → · 7.4 mi away

First Oil Well in Cooke County

1924

Located on the Bud W Davis Farm (1 mile E), Cooke County's first producing oil well came in on Nov 9, 1924, heralding the beginning of a multi-million dollar industry and a new life style for the surrounding farm community. Carnival atmosphere prevailed while sightseers and reporters flocked to the lease. One enterprising man charged admission until questioned by a worker. The discovery well, drilled by C.A. Doudrick's Big Indian Oil Company continued to produce until 1970 when it was plugged.

Historical Marker → · 9.6 mi away

Callisburg, TX

1846

Callisburg is eleven miles northeast of Gainesville in eastern Cooke County. The town was near the Butterfield Overland Mail route and on the Mormon Trail, a route established in 1846 by a group of Mormons led by Lyman Wight , who were migrating to Texas. The community was named for blacksmith Sam Callis, the first settler there. By 1873 a post office had been established at the community in Billy Rousseau's dry-goods and grocery store, and ten years later Callisburg reported a population of 300, a school, and some twenty businesses, including a steam gristmill-cotton gin. By 1902, however, its population had declined to about 110, and its post office had closed. In 1902 residents thought an electric rail line was to be built between Gainesville and Sherman to the east; Callisburg was to be used as the headquarters for this line, but the project never developed. In 1924 the Big Indian Oil and Development Company Well No. 1 was drilled on B. W. Davis's farm, a mile east of Callisburg. The community's population level fluctuated between 110 and 200 until the early 1970s, when it dropped sharply to around sixty-eight. By 1980, however, Callisburg had become incorporated, and by 1988 its population had reached a new reported high of 329. In 1988 the town had two churches, two stores, a volunteer fire department, a city hall, a community center, and its own independent school district. Its population was 344 in 1990 and grew to 365 in 2000.

Tsha Handbook → · 9.4 mi away

Sivells Bend United Methodist Church

1868

This congregation formed in 1868 as Sivells Bend Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Brothers William W. and Addison Y. Gunter conveyed two acres to church trustees E. L. Allen, WM. Midkiff and George Dillard in 1880. A large two-story church, school and masonic lodge burned in 1893. W. W. Gunter deeded the current site in 1910. The present frame church has had continuous services since its 1912 construction. During WWII, families taught Sunday school even without a supplied pastor. Later, Sivells Bend shared pastors with other Methodist churches, but has had its own pastors since 1950. Community involvement and regular worship shows a continuing focus on the true spirit of God.

Historical Marker → · 6.5 mi away

Great Hanging At Gainesville

1862

Forty suspected Unionists in Confederate Texas were hanged at Gainesville in October 1862. Two others were shot as they tried to escape. Although the affair reached its climax in Cooke County, men were killed in neighboring Grayson, Wise, and Denton counties. Most were accused of treason or insurrection, but evidently few had actually conspired against the Confederacy, and many were innocent of the abolitionist sentiments for which they were tried. The Great Hanging was the result of several years of building tension. The completion of the Butterfield Overland Mail route from St. Louis through Gainesville brought many new people from the upper South and Midwest into Cooke County. By 1860 fewer than 10 percent of the heads of households owned slaves. The slaveholders increasingly feared the influence of Kansas abolitionists in every unrest. In the summer of 1860 several slaves and a northern Methodist minister were lynched in North Texas. Cooke and the surrounding counties voted against secession and thus focused the fears of planters on the nonslaveholders in the region. Rumors of Unionist alliances with Kansas Jayhawkers and Indians along the Red River, together with the petition of E. Junius Foster, editor of the Sherman Patriot , to separate North Texas as a new free state, brought emotions to a fever pitch. Actual opposition to the Confederacy in Cooke County began with the Conscription Acts of April 1862. Thirty men signed a petition protesting the exemption of large slaveholders from the draft and sent it to the Congress at Richmond. Brig. Gen. William Hudson, commander of the militia district around Gainesville, exiled their leader, but others who remained used the petition to enlist a nucleus for a Union League in Cooke and nearby counties. The members were not highly unified, and their purposes differed with each clique. Most joined to resist the draft and provide common defense against roving Indians and renegades. Rumors began to circulate, however, of a membership of over 1,700 and of plans for an assault when the group had recruited enough men. Fearing that the stories of Unionist plots to storm the militia arsenals at Gainesville and Sherman might prove to be true, Hudson activated the state troops in North Texas in late September 1862 and ordered the arrest of all able-bodied men who did not report for duty. Texas state troops led by Col. James G. Bourland arrested more than 150 men on the morning of October 1. In Gainesville he and Col. William C. Young of the Eleventh Texas Cavalry , home on sick leave, supervised the collection of a "citizen's court" of twelve jurors. Bourland and Young together owned nearly a fourth of the slaves in Cooke County, and seven of the jurors chosen were slaveholders. Their decision to convict on a majority vote was a bad omen for the prisoners, all of whom were accused of insurrection or treason and none of whom owned slaves. The military achieved its goal of eliminating the leadership of the Union League in Cooke County when the jury condemned seven influential Unionists, but an angry mob took matters into its own hands and lynched fourteen more before the jurors recessed. Violence in Gainesville peaked the next week when unknown assassins killed Young and James Dickson. The decision already made to release the rest of the prisoners was reversed, and many were tried again. Nineteen more men were convicted and hanged. Their execution was supervised by Capt. Jim Young, Colonel Young's son. Brig. Gen. James W. Throckmorton prevented the execution of all but five men in Sherman, but in Decatur, Capt. John Hale supervised a committee that hanged five suspects. A Southern partisan shot a prisoner in Denton. Texas newspapers generally applauded the hangings, disparaged the Unionists as traitors and common thieves, and insisted they had material support from Kansas abolitionists and the Lincoln administration. The state government condoned the affair. Gov. Francis Richard Lubbock , an a

Tsha Handbook → · 11.0 mi away

Austin, Gene

1923

Gene Austin, singer and composer, was born Eugene Lucas on June 24, 1900, in Gainesville, Texas. He was the son of Nova Lucas and Serena Belle (Harrell) Lucas. His parents divorced, and his mother married Jim Austin, a blacksmith. Eugene took the surname of his stepfather. He grew up in small towns in Louisiana, joined the United States Army when he was fifteen, participated in the expedition sent to capture Francisco (Pancho) Villa in 1916, and served in France during World War I . He studied both dentistry and law in Baltimore, but decided on a singing career. Though he composed more than 100 songs, Austin never learned to read music. He was one of the original crooners, and his tenor voice was well-known in the early days of radio and on the hand-cranked phonographs of the 1920s and 1930s. His RCA Victor recordings sold a total of more than 86 million copies; one of the recordings, "My Blue Heaven" (recorded in1927), sold over 12 million records. Austin started his recording career in 1923, and the next year Jimmy McHugh produced his first hit song, "When My Sugar Walks Down the Street," with lyrics by Austin and Irving Mills. Other hit songs Austin introduced were "My Melancholy Baby," "Girl of My Dreams," "Ramona," "Carolina Moon," and "Sleepy Time Gal." His compositions included "How Come You Do Me Like You Do?" and "Lonesome Road." In the 1930s Austin debuted in the movies, which included Sadie McKee (1934) and Gift of Gab (1934) . Over the years he was also featured on numerous radio programs. In 1939 he began working with Billy Wehle in a musical-comedy tent show that spent the winter in Gainesville and opened in 1940 during the Circus Roundup of the Gainesville Community Circus . Austin was a nightclub entertainer in the 1930s, but then his career waned. After his life was dramatized in a television special in the late 1950s, he resumed nightclub appearances. He continued to write songs until the last ten months of his life, when he developed lung cancer. Austin spent most of his adult life in Las Vegas, Nevada, and in 1962 he ran for governor there, but lost badly to the incumbent, Grant Sawyer. He was married five times. He married Kathryn Arnold in 1924, and they had one daughter. After a divorce in 1929, Austin married Agnes Antelline in 1933. They had one daughter but divorced in 1940. Austin's third wife was Doris Sherrell (married in 1940 and divorced in 1946). He was then married to LouCeil Hudson from 1949 to 1966; they divorced. He married his fifth wife, Gigi Theodorea, in 1967. Austin died on January 24, 1972, in Palm Springs, California, and was survived by his wife Gigi and his two daughters. He was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Austin received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His 1927 recording of "My Blue Heaven" received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1978. He was honored with a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 2005 for his 1926 rendition of "Bye Bye Blackbird," the first recording of that song.

Tsha Handbook → · 10.3 mi away

Thackerville, Oklahoma

Music in Thackerville

Songs About Thackerville

Artists From Thackerville

Rivers & Roads in Song near Thackerville

History of Thackerville