Metcalf Gap, TX RoadyGoat

Metcalf Gap is a place where the quiet hum of Highway 41 almost drowns out the echoes of history, though if you listen close, you can still hear them. Folks around here will tell you about the drought of the 50s, how it nearly broke the back of this community built on cattle and hay. But even harder times couldn’t wash away the spirit. And music? Well, that’s always been in our blood. That unique Texas swing sound, touched with Tejano rhythms, it practically grew out of the dust and the dance halls right here. You can still hear it on a Saturday night if you know where to look.

15.1 mi away

Metcalf Gap, TX RoadyGoat

Metcalf Gap is a place shaped by hardship and resilience. You can feel it in the air, a kind of quiet strength born from knowing what it means to weather a storm. The big drought in the fifties hit these parts hard. Farms dried up, and folks had to make tough choices. Even though agriculture is still the heart of the economy – cattle and hay mostly – you can see the legacy of that time in the faces of the older generation. Highway 41 cuts right through the gap, bringing folks seeking the kind of peace you just can’t find in the city. But Metcalf Gap is more than just a quiet escape. There’s a real cultural identity here. The music scene, for example, is something special. That Texas swing with a Tejano twist – it was born right here, in dusty dance halls where folks gathered to forget their troubles. And you can’t forget the ’82 football team. Underdogs all the way, they brought home the state championship, a moment that still echoes through the town. Of course, you’ll hear about the lost gold, too. Some say a stagecoach was robbed just outside of town, and the gold is still out there, waiting to be found.

15.1 mi away

Metcalf Gap, TX RoadyGoat

Metcalf Gap is more than just a wide spot on Highway 41; it's a place etched with stories. Founded back in 1878, it started as a service hub for the scattered farms and ranches in this part of the Texas Hill Country, named for a fella named Elijah Metcalf. Ranching and hay have always been the bread and butter here, a way of life passed down through generations. You can still feel that connection to the land, a certain peacefulness that's hard to find closer to the city. Times haven't always been easy. The big drought in the '50s hit folks hard, testing their resilience. But even then, Metcalf Gap held on. And there's always been a spirit of creativity bubbling under the surface. This area birthed its own unique style of Texas swing, mixing in the Tejano sounds that drifted up from the border. And of course, there's the legend of the lost stagecoach gold, still whispered about around campfires. It’s a place where the past feels close, where the land shapes the people, and where a little bit of magic still lingers.

15.1 mi away

First Baptist Church of Santo

1872

The oldest continually active Baptist Church in Palo Pinto County, this congregation was chartered on November 3, 1872, under an oak tree near the Santo East Cemetery. Originally known as the Missionary Baptist Church of Christ at Cottonwood Grove on Palo Pinto Creek, it began with eight charter members. The present congregational name was adopted by the 1930s. For well over a century, the First Baptist Church of Santo has been active in community service, mission endeavors, associational work and the licensing and ordination of ministers. (1982)

Historical Marker →

Brazos Santiago, TX

1846

The port of Brazos Santiago was located on Brazos Island in what is now Cameron County. According to a United States Coast Survey map in 1867 it was across Brazos Santiago Pass from the south end of Padre Island (at 26°02' N, 97°09' W). Before 1848 the port was wharves on the lagoon side of Brazos Island. Goods destined for ports up the Rio Grande had to be offloaded at Brazos Santiago because the bars at the mouth of the Rio Grande were too shallow for ships capable of plying the Gulf. Trade for Matamoros and interior Mexico was landed at the harbor on Brazos Island and then transported to Matamoros by oxcart. During the Mexican War Gen. Zachary Taylor established a supply depot on Brazos Island, which handled all American and north Mexico supplies, and several thousand American troops debarked from the port. After 1848 Richard King developed shallow-draft steamboats that could negotiate the shallow bars at the mouth of the Rio Grande. His boats could then offload in the lee of Brazos Island, go around to the Gulf side, and cross the bars and travel up the Rio Grande to their destination. By 1867 the north end of Brazos Island was a well-developed military port with three wharves on Brazos Santiago Pass, a railroad south to Boca Chica and on to Whites Ranch on the Rio Grande, four barracks, a hospital with four outbuildings, two gun emplacements, numerous warehouse buildings, and a lighthouse. After the Civil War the troops left Brazos Island, and the small town of Brazos faded away; most of the buildings were destroyed by the storm of 1867.

Tsha Handbook → · 6.6 mi away

William Whipple Johnson

1860

William Whipple Johnson, the oldest of seven children, was born on October 11, 1843 in Ionia, Michigan to Ethan S. and Jane B. (Whipple) Johnson. He attended school in Ypsilanti, Michigan and in 1860 formed a business partnership with his father and his younger brother Harvey. The three men provided merchandise to the people of Ionia and within several years expanded their interests to include real estate and a hotel operation. During the Panic of 1873 and the collapse of the national economy the business suffered greatly, and the men moved from Michigan, leaving their debts behind them. By 1880, William and Harvey were in Strawn, Texas, where they opened a business in the name of Anna Fatzinger Campbell, who became William's second wife. The T&P Railroad reached Strawn that same year. William and Anna both served as postmasters, and the family established Campbell and Company, a mercantile that catered to local railroad workers. The Johnson brothers also secured a contract with the railroad to provide crossties for the line, and they created many jobs in the area for cutting cedar posts. In 1885, with the death of their three-year-old daughter Marion, William and Anna built a mausoleum on their property. There, they later interred Harvey (d. 1888) and a son, William Harvey (d. 1894). William Johnson expanded his business interests to include coal and other mining operations, and livestock trading. In 1905, he and Anna bought a 4,200-acre ranch outside of Gordon and erected a new mausoleum for their children's remains. Anna placed William's body there in 1914 and set aside money for a more permanent structure here on Salt Point. It was completed in 1923, a year after her death. The Johnsons are remembered for creating communities and business opportunities throughout Palo Pinto County. (2004)

Historical Marker → · 7.4 mi away

Gordon - 2025 Texas 1A Division I state football champion

2025

Gordon defeated Rankin 69-22 for the 2025 Texas 1A Division I state football championship.

Sports News → · 9.8 mi away

Goodnight, Charles

1857

Charles Goodnight, rancher, the fourth of five children of Charles and Charlotte (Collier) Goodnight, was born on March 5, 1836, on the family farm in Macoupin County, Illinois. His father died of pneumonia in 1841 when Charles was five, and shortly thereafter his mother married Hiram Daugherty, a neighboring farmer. In all, Charles had only six months of formal schooling. Late in 1845 he accompanied his family on the 800-mile trek south to a site in Milam County, Texas, near Nashville-on-the-Brazos, riding bareback on a white-faced mare named Blaze. He later took pride in the fact that he was born at the same time as the Republic of Texas and that he "joined" Texas the year it joined the Union. Growing up in the Brazos bottoms, the boy learned to hunt and track from an old Indian named Caddo Jake. At age eleven Charles began hiring out to neighboring farms, and at fifteen he rode as a jockey for a racing outfit at Port Sullivan. Not satisfied with that occupation, he returned to his widowed mother and younger siblings, continued at various farm and plantation jobs, including supervision of black slave crews, and for two years freighted with ox teams. In 1853 his mother married Rev. Adam Sheek, a Methodist preacher; that led to the formation of the partnership three years later between Charles and his step-brother, John Wesley Sheek. Although they considered going to California, they were dissuaded by Sheek's brother-in-law, Claiborne Varner, who induced them to run about 400 head of cattle on shares along the Brazos valley for a ten-year period. In 1857 the young partners trailed their herd up the Brazos to the Keechi valley in Palo Pinto County. At Black Springs they built a log cabin buttressed with stone chimneys, to which they brought their parents in 1858. Goodnight continued freighting cotton and provisions to Houston and back for a time until Wes Sheek married, then assumed the bulk of responsibility of looking after the growing herd of scrawny, wild Texas cattle. With his acquired hunting and trailing skills, he quickly mastered the modes of survival in the wilderness. During this time he became acquainted with Oliver Loving , who was also running cattle in the Western Cross Timbers. When the gold rush to Colorado began, Goodnight helped Loving send a herd through the Indian Territory and Kansas to the Rocky Mountain mining camps. As Indian troubles in Northwest Texas increased, concurrent with heated conflict over the reservations on the upper Brazos and Clear Fork, Goodnight and his neighbors joined forces with Capt. Jack (J. J.) Cureton 's rangers, with whom he served as a scout and guide. It was Goodnight who found the trail leading to Peta Nocona 's Comanche encampment on the Pease River in December 1860 and brought word of it back to Cureton and Capt. Lawrence Sullivan (Sul) Ross . He guided the rangers to the Indian camp and took part in the attack on December 18 in which Cynthia Ann Parker was recaptured. With the outbreak of the Civil War , Cureton's rangers, including Goodnight, were attached to the Frontier Regiment . Goodnight spent most of the war chasing marauding Indians and border toughs while ranging from the Canadian to the Colorado and Brazos headwaters with the likes of James E. McCord , James B. (Buck) Barry , and A. T. Obenchain . The intimate knowledge he gained of the vast rolling prairies and Llano Estacado later proved useful. At the expiration of his term of service in 1864, Goodnight returned to Palo Pinto County, where he and other cowmen spent the next year trying to recoup their cattle business from the chaos that characterized the frontier during that era. He sought out a new range along Elm Creek, in Throckmorton County, where Indians ran off nearly 2,000 head of his cattle in September 1865. Since cattle markets in Texas were poor at that time, Goodnight looked for a higher price at the Indian agencies and army posts in New Mexico, where beef was in demand. In the spring of 1866 he an

Tsha Handbook → · 11.9 mi away

Slaughter, Robert Lee

1881

Robert Lee (Bob) Slaughter, pioneer rancher, the fifth of six children of Cynthia Ann (Jowell) and Christopher Columbus Slaughter , was born in the fall of 1870 at his father's ranch in Palo Pinto County. He was "raised in the saddle" and given the best educational opportunities available. He moved with his family to Dallas in 1874 and later was enrolled as a student in the private academy of G. W. Grove. A story relates that in 1881, after C. C. Slaughter accepted a fraudulent offer of a half million dollars from two bogus English noblemen for the Long S Ranch, Bob rode 335 miles in forty-one hours to beat the schemers to the property and so thwart their criminal effort. He stated later that it took several months for him recover fully from that torturous marathon run. Subsequently, the ride became a Western legend. Bob may have fabricated it himself in the 1930s, since there are no preserved documents from this early period of the Slaughter empire. At any rate, the remainder of his youth was largely divided between school and long summers on his father's ranches. In 1888, after Gus O'Keefe had resigned to start his own operation, Slaughter named eighteen-year-old Bob to succeed him as manager of the Long S, the ranch he had helped save. Though headstrong and boisterous, with a reputation as a practical joker, he was the most experienced cowman and thus the first of the Slaughter sons to assume a managerial role in the family business empire. As foreman he hired those he deemed "superior men," whom he paid five dollars a month more than the average wage. Although the panic of 1893 forced him momentarily to decrease those wages, while keeping his own salary at a mere seventy-five dollars a month, Slaughter enjoyed entertaining friends. By 1893 he settled into the routine life of a ranch manager after marrying Florence Harris. They had a son and later moved into a family residence at Midland. As the new century dawned Slaughter became heavily involved in the early land rushes and colonization efforts in Dawson and Howard counties. In 1909, when William P. Soash began buying up Long S properties, he put Slaughter in charge of his Soash Development Company, which founded Soash on the Howard-Borden county line. When automobiles came to West Texas, Slaughter bought a Pierce Arrow convertible, which he drove relentlessly over the ranch properties; fast cars soon became as much a passion to him as were fast horses and mules. Despite his good intentions, he never entirely settled into a standard routine. With his brother-in-law, George T. Veal, he invested in a large ranch southwest of Moctezuma, Sonora, Mexico, and also had ranching interests in the El Paso area. The resultant neglect of affairs on the Long S finally prompted C. C. Slaughter in 1911 to appoint Jack Alley to manage the ailing establishment. With the untimely death of his older brother George Morgan Slaughter in 1915, Bob Slaughter assumed management of the Lazy S, but his other interests continued to distract him, and after his father died in 1919, that ranch was divided among the Slaughter heirs to keep it solvent. During the chaotic years of the Mexican Revolution , Slaughter's ranch in Sonora was raided and plundered of stock and provisions several times by Yaqui Indian rebels. One raid occurred while his son and daughter-in-law were staying there. By the time of his father's death, Slaughter had acquired the Western S Ranch on the Rio Grande in Hudspeth County. When his uncle, W. B. (Bill) Slaughter , who had been appointed manager of the Long S in 1916, attempted to sell that border operation behind his nephew's back, Bob and his younger brothers confronted and fired him, after which ensued a bitter but unsuccessful slander suit. In 1923 Slaughter sold his Midland residence and moved to Lubbock to be near his inherited portion of the Lazy S, the old Zavala Pasture in southwestern Hockley County. The following year, along with his brother Dick and sister, Minnie S

Tsha Handbook → · 11.9 mi away

Santo, Texas

Music in Santo

Songs About Santo

Artists From Santo

Rivers & Roads in Song near Santo

History of Santo

Metcalf Gap, TX RoadyGoat

Metcalf Gap, TX RoadyGoat

Metcalf Gap, TX RoadyGoat

First Baptist Church of Santo

Brazos Santiago, TX

William Whipple Johnson

Gordon - 2025 Texas 1A Division I state football champion

Goodnight, Charles

Slaughter, Robert Lee

Things to Do in Santo

Everything Near Santo