Essays
Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado
Coke County is remote and resplendent in history and beauty
September 6, 2006
Zooming up State Highway 158 from Sterling City towards Robert Lee, travelers are surprised by the sight of buffalo on the north side of the road. They belong to a fellow marketing their meat, but they slap me back a hundred and fifty years – back to the buffalo prairie days when Sanaco of the Paneteka Comanche roamed the area. Sanaco and his band were the only “honey-eaters” that did not go to the Brazos River reservation that Robert Neighbors established. The Paneteka bands did their best to maintain friendly relations with the Texans, despite the horrors of the Council House massacre in Austin.
The northeastern quarter of Coke County “reeks” of stories. Today few people live in the region; the towns of Robert Lee, Bronte, and Blackwell (just across the Nolan County line) are the only extant towns. A number of folks live around the Spence Reservoir on the Colorado River. Ghost towns are more common – Edith, Sanco, Hayrick, Fort Chadbourne, and Silver. The first three were towns of settlement days, but Silver is a ghost town of the oil boom days in the 1940s. Garland Richards preserves the fort of Fort Chadbourne, but the town is a brambly thicket where only a few foundations can be found.
If you, the reader, have a little time, check out this website and find out more about the two Fort Chadbournes and Edith. Just type the names into the website search engine! I love to wander the dirt county roads of the region – I still have not gone down each and every one. The paved county roads are fun, too, like the Silver loop and the Sanco loop. Both are west of Robert Lee off of State Highway 208. Another great paved road is FM 2034 that goes over the divide to Water Valley on the Concho River.
All three roads rarely have another car besides yours. A person can stop and admire the wildflowers, watch the birds, and enjoy the spectacular scenery. The Sanco loop through the valley of Yellow Wolf Creek has the best-preserved abandoned buildings (and at least two inhabited houses.) Sanco is the shortened version of Sanaco’s name. The valley of Yellow Wolf Creek was one of his favorite camping spots.
Barbara Barton is an amateur historian from Knickerbocker (near San Angelo) that has published several books on Concho and Colorado River history. I take her books along, and search out the location of some of the stories she relates, and then try to imagine seeing the story unfold – it can be a fun group or family game, too. “What if the stagecoach was coming along right about here, and some of Sanaco’s warriors broke out of those cedars – can you see the driver whipping the horses and yelling? You be the wife of the doctor at Fort Chadbourne and imagine you are holding a sickly child, and I’ll be the driver, and you can be the young man come west for adventure!”
A favorite place of the early settlers in the big bend of the Colorado River valley was Dripping Springs. It was the site of many picnics, church socials, and camp meetings. A person can get to it today – just turn north off of SH 158 at the historical marker for Edith and go north until the road bends west. Not far past the turn, the road makes a little dipsy-do twist around the spot. Sometimes a tiny creek crosses the road and then dribbles into a box canyon. Park your car on the bedrock and look over into the box canyon. Big pools of water are down there, along with big willow trees, maidenhair fern, and other riparian vegetation. The landowner allows passerbys to poke around – at least I have never known of anyone being arrested for trespassing, and so far, people have respected his generosity -- I haven’t ever seen much trash there. (To see what you will find, go to our website and click on recommended daytrips and click on Coke County sights. There will also be pictures of Sanco, the buffalo mentioned above, the one remaining building of the town of Fort Chadbourne, the Hayrick cemetery and of reenactors at the fort.)
The Butterfield stage ran from the fort to a ford on the Colorado River downstream from Robert Lee. About ten miles east of Robert Lee a dirt county road leads north to the Hayrick Cemetery and then continues on to the east through a gap in the hills before getting into the valley of Oak Creek. The stage road roughly ran along the same route. Hayrick Cemetery is directly under Hayrick Mountain. Hayrick was the first county seat of Coke County, but the courthouse was burned, and then burned again after it was rebuilt. After that, a new courthouse was built in Robert Lee. Can you imagine being so impassioned about the issue of having your town being the county seat that you would go in the dark of night and burn another town’s courthouse? Geez!
Barton tells of a turn of the century road from the town of Fort Chadbourne to Colorado City that ran down Yellow Wolf Creek, and it may be that the road was older, as an alternate route for the Butterfield Stage and other earlier immigrants. She relates that along that road the remains of a Spanish explorer was once found with sword and scabbard. Along that road, too, was a huge live oak where a passerby found a freshly dug hole with the imprint of a large iron pot where supposedly a “treasure” had been unearthed. A gentleman by the name of Earl Gregston, a fine storyteller with a grand collection of artifacts, kept those stories (and more) alive through most of the 20th century.
Strip malls and gated developments do not mar the scenery as they do in so much of the modern day Hill Country regions west of Austin. Few people have summer homes, retirement homes, or getaway property in the region. The only times that the roads seem busy are the first couple of weekends after deer season begins. The wildness of Coke County enriches the power of the stories – a person can more easily imagine being in times past.