Ranger

By Alfred Rogers

Ranger began in the 1870s near a Texas Ranger camp in northeastern Eastland County. It remained a farming community of about 700 people until October 17, 1917, when an oil well on the McCleskey farm, south of town, ushered in one of the best-known oil discoveries. Within months, Ranger's population had surged to approximately 30,000, including investors, speculators, wildcatters, oil field workers, curious onlookers, and the usual criminal element attracted to oil boomtowns. Crime became so rampant that the Texas Rangers eventually were called in to intercede. Oil production peaked in 1919 before tapering off. Images of America: Ranger covers a period of about 75 years from the town's beginnings to 1950.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Sep 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781439641248

Alfred Rogers

Author Alfred Rogers, a retired librarian from the University of Texas Libraries system, grew up in Ranger and has had a long-standing interest in its history. Using vintage photographs from the Ranger Historical Preservation Society, local residents and museums, a number of libraries and archival collections, and his own collection, Rogers tells the story of the village that became one of the best-known oil boomtowns anywhere.

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INTRODUCTION

The Texas Rangers set up camp in northeastern Eastland County in the 1870s to counter outlaws and Comanche Indian raids. Neither the date the camp was established nor its exact location is known. However, it is known that the camp was on the Watson ranch, which eventually would be the Hagaman ranch. Archaeological evidence indicates that the camp was south of the area that would become Hagaman Lake.

Around the Texas Ranger camp a community grew up; a community of settlers that lived mostly in tents, set up stores in tents, and worshipped in tents. Eventually a school was established. The settlement came to be known as Ranger Camp, in an area called Ranger Camp Valley.

In the meantime, the Texas and Pacific Railway Company was pushing westward across the country. Following the natural contour of the land, its railroad ran about 2 miles southwest of Ranger Camp. The company bought 160 acres from Isham G. Searcy for a town site, which it called Ranger in recognition of the Texas Rangers and Ranger Camp.

When the town site was laid out, what eventually became Main Street was Locust Street, what came to be Commerce Street was North Front Street, and what would be U.S. Highway 80 many years later was South Front Street. A number of other streets had names different from their modern counterparts.

The railroad reached Ranger on October 15, 1880, and Ranger Camp had moved to be near it. In the beginning, the new settlement was a collection of mostly tents, which were not only habitations, but also stores, a hotel, and restaurants. Soon more permanent structures were built. Ranger was a farming community, with the usual general mercantile stores, wagon yards, cotton yards, cotton gins, blacksmith shops, feed stores, and livery stables. In a few years, the population grew to about 700.

By 1917, the worst drought that anyone could remember was devastating the region. Realizing the need to diversify the largely agrarian economy, a group of businessmen, headed by John M. Gholson, approached William K. Gordon, head of the Texas and Pacific Coal Company’s operation at Thurber, 16 miles east of Ranger. Gordon not only supervised the coal mine there, but also had done some exploratory drilling for oil in the area, with some success. He agreed to finance drilling of four exploratory wells around Ranger in exchange for leases on about 25,000 acres.

The first test well, on the Nannie Walker farm north of town, was a disappointment. Rather than oil, it began spewing gas, for which there was no market at the time. The second well, however, on the John McCleskey farm 1 mile south of Ranger, came in October 17, 1917. Frank Champion, the driller on duty, walked to town with the news that the McCleskey was a gusher.

Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company, which changed its name from Texas and Pacific Coal Company when it became heavily involved in oil exploration, obtained lease after lease in the newly discovered Ranger oil field, and soon oil derricks dotted the landscape. Word of the oil boom spread quickly, and by early 1918, Ranger’s population was estimated to be 30,000. Ten trains a day brought in drilling contractors, drillers, other oil field workers, speculators, investors, and curious onlookers.

A new oil discovery could not have come at a better time. The nation’s oil reserves were low, in part because of the growing demands of an industrialized economy, which needed petroleum products. World War I’s need for petroleum was an even more immediate concern. By December 1916, in fact, the lack of oil was critical in the war effort. The British fleet had to curtail operations. Shortly after Armistice on November 11, 1918, however, George Nathaniel Curzon, a member of the British War Cabinet and later British foreign secretary, was able to say that the Allied cause had been floated to victory on a wave of oil. Virtually all the new supply was American, coming from oil fields such as Ranger.

Ranger was ill prepared to deal with the masses of people coming into town. Hotels and rooming houses sprang up, but they were inadequate to cope with the influx. Men slept in hotel rooms in shifts, and they paid to sleep in hotel lobby chairs. Sanitary conditions were terrible, and the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918 meant many deaths in Ranger, as elsewhere. In the fall of that year, the long drought ended, and a two-year period of far above-average rainfall began, turning Ranger’s unpaved, dusty, rutted streets into seas of mud.

By that time, Ranger, like other oil boomtowns, had another problem: crime of all descriptions. There were murders (five in one 24-hour period), knifings, brawls, robbery, prostitution, and gambling. Saloons flourished even after Prohibition. Saloons and other such places had colorful names, including Old Rock Saloon, Oklahoma Cabaret, Winter Garden, the Gusher, Bucket of Blood (also known as the Bloody Bucket), Blue Mouse Cabaret, and Grizzly Bear. Before the city was incorporated in February 1919 and was without an organized police department, the Texas Rangers were called in to maintain law and order. Even after there was a police department, the Rangers occasionally interceded, as in a raid on the Commercial Hotel in 1921.

The Ku Klux Klan was very active in Ranger in the early 1920s. It issued its own newsletter, Ku-Klux in Round, and campaigned against what it called immorality and continuing lawlessness. Law enforcement did indeed seem spotty. Former Texas Ranger Byron Parrish, promising to rid Ranger of gambling, soliciting, wide-open cabarets, and gun-toting, was appointed chief of police in late 1919. Scarcely two months later, city commissioners put him on probation for failure to close gambling houses, and he was eventually dismissed. Chiefs-of-police came and went with some frequency in those days. The Ranger Daily Times reported that there were 16 chiefs-of-police within 47 months, from February 1919 to January 1923.

Ranger had many famous visitors during the oil boom. Among them were novelist Rex Beach, who came to town to gather material for Flowing Gold; evangelist Billy Sunday, who preached to a large crowd in the streets; and former U.S. president William Howard Taft. He mingled unnoticed with the crowds on the streets and gave an address to the 1920 Club. One club member noted in her club yearbook that members had to hunt for a music score of