Cisco, Texas

Everything Cisco is known for

3 songs mention this city 0 artists from here

Music in Cisco

Songs About Cisco

sweet thang and cisco
nat stuckey
90%
Great Divide
Jack Ingram
50%
Cisco Kid
Method Man
16%
"Cisco Kid was a friend of mine"

Artists From Cisco

No artists from Cisco in the database yet.

Rivers & Roads in Song near Cisco

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Cisco.

Interstate 20 13 songs Brazos River 42 songs

History of Cisco

Conrad Hilton's First Hotel RoadyGoat

Right here in downtown Cisco stands the humble beginning of a global empire. In 1919, a man named Conrad Hilton arrived with plans to buy a bank. When that deal soured, he went to stay at the local hotel, the Mobley. He found the lobby packed with oilfield workers, all desperate for a room—so desperate, the owner was considering selling. Hilton saw his real opportunity not in banking, but in hospitality. He scraped together his money and bought the Mobley Hotel. To meet the incredible demand, he converted the dining room into more sleeping space and rented rooms in three separate eight-hour shifts to accommodate the round-the-clock oil workers. It was a masterclass in supply and demand. That experience at the Mobley taught him the principles of hotel management and launched the Hilton Hotels corporation. The building is still here, a quiet monument to a legendary business career that started with an oil boom and a crowded lobby.

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The Santa Claus Bank Robbery RoadyGoat

Imagine the scene. It's two days before Christmas, 1927. A man dressed as Santa Claus walks through downtown Cisco, delighting children. But when he enters the First National Bank, he's not there to spread cheer. He and three accomplices pull out guns, launching one of the most violent bank robberies in Texas history. The townspeople fought back, turning the street into a war zone. The robbers, overwhelmed, fled the bank, firing wildly and grabbing two young girls as human shields. They escaped, but it triggered a massive, week-long manhunt. The chase involved shootouts, stolen cars, and a statewide alert. In the end, all the robbers were either killed or captured, but they had murdered the police chief and a deputy. The stolen money was recovered, and the two girls were found safe. It’s a terrifying, heroic, and defining moment in Cisco's past, a wild west story that unfolded in the modern age.

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Cisco, TX RoadyGoat

Cisco's history began in 1878 or 1879 when Rev. C. G. Stevens established a post office and a church, naming the settlement 'Red Gap'. The town moved to its current location in 1881 when the Houston and Texas Central Railway crossed the Texas and Pacific, with May 17, 1881, considered Cisco's 'birthday'. The town was officially recognized and renamed 'Cisco' in honor of New York financier John J. Cisco in 1884. A devastating F4 tornado struck Cisco in 1893, killing 28 people and destroying nearly every building. Conrad Hilton started the Hilton Hotel chain with a hotel he bought in Cisco in 1919. During the 1920s, Cisco was a petroleum boomtown, with its population swelling to an estimated 15,000 at its peak. The Santa Claus Bank Robbery occurred in Cisco in 1927.

Santa Claus Bank Robbery - Cisco

1927

On December 23, 1927, Marshall Ratliff robbed the First National Bank of Cisco dressed as Santa Claus. The resulting gun battle killed two lawmen and led to the last old-fashioned lynch mob in Texas.

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First National Bank

1927

Scene of daring Santa Claus Bank Robbery, Dec. 23, 1927. During Christmas festivities, costumed Santa and three fellow bandits looted bank of $12,200 cash, $150,000 in securities. They escaped through gun battle with two little girls as hostages. A three-day manhunt followed. The children and money were recovered; the robbers captured. Six persons were killed, eight injured. Later a mob lynched "Santa" when he broke out of jail. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1967

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Hilton Hotels Corporation

1919

Hilton Hotels Corporation, headquartered in Beverly Hills, California, develops, owns, manages, and franchises hotels, hotel-casinos, resorts, and vacation ownership resorts in the United States and throughout the world. Hilton Hotels was the first hotel chain to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The company grew out of the Mobley Hotel at Cisco, Texas, which Conrad Nicholson Hilton purchased in 1919. In 1929 Hilton consolidated his properties into Hilton Hotels, Incorporated. Despite advertising in national magazines, the firm came close to bankruptcy in 1931 as economic hardship lessened nationwide travel. Hilton recovered only with the help of Shearn and William Lewis Moody, Jr. , of Galveston, and a number of other investors, merging his hotels with the Moodys' operations to form the National Hotel Company, for which he served as one-third owner and acting general manager. After the merger failed, Hilton resumed his independent operation in 1934 with five hotels, and in 1938 he acquired the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco, his first hotel outside of Texas. In 1942 Hilton established his corporate headquarters at Beverly Hills, California. Hilton Hotels was incorporated under Delaware laws in 1946 and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange by 1947. The company began to expand abroad, starting in Mexico, and in 1948 Hilton formed Hilton Hotels International, a wholly owned subsidiary. By 1949 the company had entered the gaming business with the development of a casino at San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 1954 Hilton assumed the mortgage and operation of the Shamrock Hotel in Houston and acquired the Statler chain of eight hotels (with two more under construction). This action resulted in a suit by the United States Justice Department alleging violation of the Clayton Antitrust Act. Nonetheless, the company pioneered the idea of airport hotels by 1959, when it opened the San Francisco Airport Hilton. The company also eventually acquired the Mayflower in Washington, the Palmer House in Chicago, and the Plaza and the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, along with fifty-four hotels abroad. In 1965 the company formed its Statler Hilton Inns (later known as Hilton Inns), a corporate franchising subsidiary. In 1966 Hilton's son, William Barron Hilton, became president of Hilton Hotels Corporation. Hilton International was spun off as a separate corporation in 1964, with Conrad Hilton as president, before becoming a subsidiary of Trans-World Airlines in 1967. Hilton Hotels Corporation entered the gaming business in 1970, when Barron Hilton purchased what became the Las Vegas Hilton and the Flamingo Hilton. In 1975 Hilton sold a 50 percent interest in six of its hotels to Prudential Insurance. Conrad Hilton died in 1979 at the age of ninety-one, and Barron Hilton assumed the chairmanship. Hilton's original company slogan, "Minimax," reflected a policy of minimum price for maximum service. Later the company adopted the slogans "Across the Nation," "Around the World," and "So Nice to Come Home To." Hilton International fostered the goal of "World Peace Through International Trade and Travel." After the Havana Hilton was seized by the Cuban government, however, Hilton established international hotels only in locally owned buildings that the corporation then managed and staffed. By the late 1980s more than 270 United States hotels and inns operated under the Hilton name, and the firm continued to expand through Conrad International; through a domestic, moderately priced suburban hotel chain known as CrestHil and later as Hilton Garden Inns; and through a suite-only line of hotels. In the early 1990s, Hilton Hotels Corporation had sales of $514 million and profits of $99 million. In 124 cities there were franchised Hilton Inns, which paid to use the Hilton name and reservation service. Hilton owned up to half of some of the thirty hotels it managed, including the Beverly Hilton, and eighteen hotels outright. The Las Vegas Hilton and

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Hilton, Conrad Nicholson

1919

Conrad Hilton, hotel executive, the son of Augustus Holver and Mary (Laufersweiler) Hilton, was born in San Antonio, New Mexico, on December 25, 1887. He attended Goss Military Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico Military Institute at Roswell, and St. Michael's College in Santa Fe. By the age of eighteen he had worked as a clerk, a trader, and a speculator. His first experience in hotels came in 1907, when his father converted part of the family general store into a hotel to meet his financial obligations. Hilton next spent two years at the New Mexico Institute of Mining at Socorro and then became a partner in a mercantile business. In 1912 he was elected to serve a term in the first New Mexico state legislature. In 1913 he opened the New Mexico State Bank, where he was considered too young to serve as chief executive and worked as the manager for a musical trio. He enlisted in 1917 and served as a lieutenant in the Quartermaster Corps of the American Expeditionary Force during World War I . In 1919, after his discharge, Hilton purchased his first hotel, the Mobley, at Cisco, Texas. It was the beginning of a hotel empire built in three stages: first, by leasing and renovating old hotels; next, by building new hotels on leased land, primarily in Texas; and, third, by buying existing hotels at low prices. Hilton opened a new Texas hotel every year between 1925 and 1930 and by the onset of the Great Depression owned a total of eight. Despite efforts to advertise in national magazines, however, he was close to bankruptcy by 1931. Economic hardship lessened nationwide travel and forced him to close his El Paso hotel in 1933. He recovered, with the help of Shearn and William L. Moody, Jr. , of Galveston and a number of other investors, and subsequently merged his hotels with the Moodys' operations to form the National Hotel Company, of which he was one-third owner and general manager. The merger failed, however, and in 1934 Hilton resumed his independent operation with five hotels. He served as chairman of the Hilton Hotels Corporation , formed on May 29, 1946, and of Hilton International Company, organized in 1948, which became a subsidiary of Trans-World Airlines after 1967. In 1954 he assumed the mortgage and operation of the Shamrock Hotel in Houston and acquired the Statler hotel system. The action resulted in a suit brought by the United States Justice Department alleging violation of the Clayton Antitrust Act. In all, Hilton eventually owned 188 hotels in thirty-eight United States cities, including the Mayflower in Washington, the Palmer House in Chicago, and the Plaza and Waldorf-Astoria in New York, and fifty-four hotels abroad. He later purchased the Carte Blanche Credit Company and an interest in the American Crystal Sugar Company, as well as other enterprises. After 1965 he was chairman of the Hilton-Burns Hotels Company, Incorporated. Hilton received honorary degrees from the University of Detroit (1953), DePaul University (1954), Barat College of the Sacred Heart (1955), Adelphi College and New Mexico College of Architectural and Mechanical Arts (1957), Sophia University, Tokyo (1963), and the University of Albuquerque (1975). In 1957 he published his autobiography, Be My Guest , and in 1963, Inspirations of an Innkeeper . He also authored a prayer, "America on Its Knees," first published in 1952 and later placed in every Hilton hotel. Hilton was a Catholic who supported numerous causes, including Loretto Academy in El Paso. He received numerous awards from the United States and overseas governments and was a personal friend of Dwight D. Eisenhower . In 1925 he married Mary Barron, with whom he had three sons. He was divorced in 1934, and in 1942 married actress Zsa Zsa Gabor. After their divorce in 1946, Hilton married a woman named Mary Frances in 1976; the couple had one daughter. Hilton purchased his principal residence, Casa Encantada, in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, California, in 1950. He died on Januar

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Old Mobley Hotel

1916

First hotel owned by Conrad Hilton, who proceeded to become "The World's Foremost Innkeeper". Built in 1916, who sold out (1919) during Cisco's great oil boom to Hilton, then a 32-year-old ex-legislator and banker from New Mexico. On night of purchase Hilton "dreamed of Texas wearing a chain of Hilton hotels". In time reality outran that dream. Hotel was in use many years after sale by Hilton in 1925. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1970

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Things to Do in Cisco

day trip
Hiking a CREEPY Abandoned ZOO 🦙 Cisco, Texas

Featured on The Daytripper — a full-episode local travel guide.

Everything Near Cisco

119 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

Explore Cisco on the Map
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