Name: Mexia, Texas
Address: Mexia, TX

The Girl Who Didn't Want to Come Home RoadyGoat

1836

In May of eighteen thirty-six — the same spring Texas declared independence — a force of Comanche, Kiowa, and allied warriors raided Fort Parker. Among the captives taken was a girl named Cynthia Ann Parker, estimated to be between eight and eleven years old. She lived with the Comanche for twenty-four years, took the name Naduah — meaning was found — married a chief named Peta Nocona, and had three children. Her youngest son, Quanah Parker, would grow up to become the last free Comanche chief and one of the most influential Native leaders in American history. In December of eighteen sixty, Texas Rangers led by Lawrence Sullivan Ross found Cynthia Ann at the Battle of Pease River and brought her back to Texas. She was recognized by her light hair and blue eyes. She spent the remaining eleven years of her life trying to return to the Comanche. She died in eighteen seventy-one, never having made it back.

12.3 mi away

Teague, TX RoadyGoat

Teague, Texas, might seem like just another dot on the map along Highway 84, but it’s a place where the ordinary and the extraordinary have a way of brushing shoulders. Established when the railroad came through, it's named for a railroad man, B.F. Teague. The land here, with its post oaks and blackjack oaks dotting the gentle hills rising from the Richland Creek bottom, is good for farming and raising families. You can feel that deep connection to the land in the air, a certain quiet strength that’s been here since before the town even had a name. But Teague’s more than just fields and Friday night lights at the high school. It’s a place that's touched the wider world.

12.5 mi away

Teague, TX RoadyGoat

Teague wasn't much of anything until the railroad decided to lay tracks through this part of Freestone County. Before that, it was just rolling hills covered in post oaks and blackjack oaks, land drained by Richland Creek on its way to the Trinity. But in 1906, they named this spot after a railroad official, B.F. Teague, and suddenly, this little patch became a hub. Folks came for the jobs, for the promise of something more than just farming. Agriculture is still key here, always has been, but the railroad gave Teague its start, its reason to be different from the surrounding communities. Nowadays, people might stop in Teague on Highway 84 between Waco and Palestine. But the real reason folks end up staying, the reason they remember Teague, isn't the history or the legends. It’s the feeling of community. Friday night football at the high school, the Lions battling it out, that's Teague. It's the kind of small-town charm you just don't find everywhere anymore, a place where neighbors still look out for each other.

12.5 mi away

Mexia, TX

1920

Mexia is at the intersection of U.S. Highway 84 and State highways 14 and 171, twelve miles northeast of Groesbeck in northeastern Limestone County. It was named for the Mexía family, who in 1833 received an eleven-league land grant that included what is now the townsite. The town was laid out in 1870 by a trustee of the Houston and Texas Central Townsite Company, which offered lots for sale in 1871, as the Houston and Texas Central Railway was completed between Hearne and Groesbeck. The Mexia post office began operation in 1872, and the community was incorporated with a mayoral form of government in 1873 by an act of the legislature. The city's first newspaper, the Ledger , was established in Fairfield in 1869 and moved to Mexia in 1872. By 1880 Mexia also had four schools, three churches, and a variety of businesses to serve its 1,800 residents; by 1885 the town had a gas works, an opera house, two banks, two sawmills, and 2,000 residents. The Mexia Democrat was established in 1887 and the Weekly News in 1898. Between 1904 and 1906 the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway built track between Hillsboro and Houston, making Mexia a commercial crossroads for area farmers. In 1912 the Mexia Gas and Oil Company drilled ten dry holes, but in the eleventh attempt discovered a large natural gas deposit. The Mexia oilfield was discovered in 1920, and the population of Mexia increased from 3,482 to nearly 35,000. The rapid growth was too great for local authorities to handle, and for a short time in 1922 Mexia was under martial law. That year proved to be the peak production year for the Mexia field, with 35 million barrels produced. Cumulative production of the field totaled 108 million barrels by the mid-1980s. In 1924 Mexia residents passed a new city charter that changed the local government to a city manager system. After the initial oil boom, the population of Mexia declined to 10,000 by the mid-1920s. The prosperity generated by the boom, however, continued until the 1930s, when the Great Depression forced many people to leave in search of work. The number of residents in the town stabilized at 6,500 in the early 1930s, but the number of businesses reported fell from 280 to 190. In 1942 a camp for prisoners of war was established at Mexia; the facility was converted in 1947 for use as the Mexia State School , which became one of the community's principal employers. The population was reported as 6,618 in the early 1950s, 5,943 in the early 1970s, 7,172 in the late 1980s, and 6,933 in 1990. In 2000 the population was listed as 6,563.

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Reiter, Wilhelm Arthur

1920

Wilhelm Arthur “Bill” Reiter, geologist whose expertise and persistence brought in the Mexia Oil Field, was born at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 21, 1886. He was the son of William Theodore Reiter and Carrie L. (Putnam) Reiter. His grandfather, Conrad Reiter, had been an oil wildcatter in the dawn days of the U. S. oil business in Pennsylvania and inspired Reiter to seek a career in oil. After his father’s death, Wilhelm moved with his mother to a farm in western Kentucky. In 1910 Reiter earned a degree as a mining engineer at Kentucky State University, where he met F. Julius Fohs, nationally-known petroleum engineer. From 1909 to 1916 Reiter worked for the U. S. Geological Survey before he became one of Fohs’s stable of bright, college-educated young geologists in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After service in the United States Army during World War I , Reiter returned to Tulsa. On April 1, 1919, he reported to the Corsicana-Mexia region of Texas on instructions from Fohs to hunt for oil in existing natural gas fields. Although his boss became discouraged about prospects and ordered him to another site, Reiter was so sure that there was oil in Limestone County that he arranged financing himself and insisted that the discovery well be drilled. He was amply vindicated when Roger No. 1 blew in on November 19, 1920, setting off the incredible Mexia oil boom and opening up a field which was to produce more than 100 million barrels. The Mexia Field was pivotal in the history of Texas oil as the first fault-line oil reservoir and the first to exploit the rich Woodbine Sand ( see WOODBINE FAULT-LINE FIELDS ), which later produced millions of barrels of crude from all over the eastern half of the state, including the great East Texas Oil Field , the field that won World War II . In 1922 Reiter married Minnie Lucille Denning of Mexia, who had had the honor of driving the stake for Rogers No. 1. The same year he left the Fohs organization to join with a fellow geologist, William Henry Foster , to form Foster-Reiter Consulting Geologists and the Reiter Oil Corporation. These successful companies evolved into the Reiter-Foster Oil Corporation with offices in Tulsa, Dallas (where Reiter made his home and had offices in the Magnolia Building), and New York. He sold his interest in the corporation in early 1929. In 1936 Reiter moved to Houston to resume work for the Julius Fohs organization. During 1946 he worked geology for the Sinclair Oil Company in Panama and returned to set up business for himself as an independent in Houston. Some of his important later discoveries were the Reiter Field in Freestone County in 1949, the Reiter North Field in Navarro County in 1951, the Coit Field in Limestone County in 1952, the Cistern North Field in Fayette and Bastrop counties in 1964, and the Mary Macha Gas Field in Wharton County in 1958. All three of his sons—William Jr., Putnam K., and Jesse Oscar—became active in the oil business. Putnam K., who later became Judge P. K. Reiter of Houston, said that his father discovered more oil after the age of sixty-five then before it, in spite of his early successes. Reiter died in Mexia on April 13, 1974. He was buried in Mexia City Cemetery.

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Mexia - Oil, Vice, and the Rangers

1920

The 1920 oil strike near Mexia brought 30,000 people to a town of 4,000. The resulting lawlessness, bootlegging, and vice led Governor Pat Neff to declare martial law in 1922.

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Steel, Alfonso

1836

He was severely wounded in the Battle of San Jacinto and its last survivor. Erected by the State of Texas, 1962

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Mexia Oil Boom

1912

One of great free-wheeling oil booms of America before proration was enforced. Population in Mexia increased from 4,000 to 50,000 within days after oil discovery in 1920 at Rogers No. 1 Well, located 1.6 miles west of this marker, just off FM Road 1633 Earlier (in 1912), Blake Smith and other Mexia men had brought in a gas field. Believing oil also could be found here, they interested a veteran operator flamboyant wildcatter A. E. Humphreys-- who struck oil at 3,105 feet. By May 1912 gushers were flowing. Humphreys had 2,000 men; did a $4,000,000 business. His fortune later was estimated at $37,000,000. The boom was on. Other companies were formed. A second renowned wildcatter, J. K. Hughes, shared the leadership in developing the field to capacity. Millionaires, merchants, celebrities, operators and workers swarmed to Mexia for a share in the "Black Gold." Many undesirables came also, and one day were ousted by the thousands by Texas Rangers. In 1920-1921 first boom year, $5,000,000 went into construction; tanks for over 30 million barrels of oil were built; but even so storage area was inadequate for output. A park and clubhouse developed near this site by Col. Humphreys-- mementos of boom-- are still in use. 1967

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Hord, Thomas Alan

1876

Thomas Alan Hord, early town marshal, cotton buyer, and land developer, was born on March 10, 1841, in Obion County, Tennessee, the son of Judge William H. and Mary Jane (Crockett) Hord . His family moved to Texas in January 1845 and settled near the site of Dallas. At that time there were fewer than twenty people in the area. When he was nine, Hord trapped and killed a bear on the wooded banks of Cedar Creek. After attending the school his mother had opened in Dallas, Hord went back to Tennessee to study at Cumberland Law School in Lebanon. In 1861, when the Civil War broke out, he returned to Dallas and enlisted in the First Texas Battery of Dallas and Tyler (Good-Douglas Battery). He served in the unit throughout the war and saw action on both sides of the Mississippi. After the war Hord became a land developer and cotton buyer. He lived in Port Sullivan, Bryan, and Calvert in the late 1860s and early 1870s. At the request of the townspeople of Mexia in 1876, he became town marshal; he survived several shootouts and was a "terror to outlaws" until 1889. On September 23, 1887, Hord married Katherine Caldwell of Danville, Kentucky, with whom he had two children. He moved to Dallas in 1891 after a brief stay in Rockport and helped to develop Oak Cliff. He was active in community affairs and was one of the founding members of the Oak Cliff Presbyterian Church. Hord died in Dallas on October 28, 1914, and is buried in the Oak Cliff Cemetery.

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Mexia, Texas

Music in Mexia

Songs About Mexia

Artists From Mexia

Rivers & Roads in Song near Mexia

History of Mexia

The Girl Who Didn't Want to Come Home RoadyGoat

Teague, TX RoadyGoat

Teague, TX RoadyGoat

Mexia, TX

Reiter, Wilhelm Arthur

Mexia - Oil, Vice, and the Rangers

Steel, Alfonso

Mexia Oil Boom

Hord, Thomas Alan

Everything Near Mexia