An old settler noted in an 1884 Stephenville Empire that when he arrived in Erath County during the 1850s there were herds of fifty to seventy-five “red bucks” in the area. I have puzzled ever since I read this wondering if he was referring to elk.

For more than a century before Erath County was settled large herds of feral cattle and horses roamed the area. Non-thorny vegetation was browsed out of the Bosque Valley, allowing the black haw (Viburnum rufidulum) and red haw (Crataegus mackensenii) to become numerous. After settlement, when livestock was fenced away from the river, the haws were chocked out by competing vegetation. Recently Tarleton’s Dr. Alan Nelson, gave up trying to find any surviving haws and pronounced them extinct in the area. But in 1883, barbed-wire fences were so recent and destruction of the haws range still limited, that the haw population was harvested each November. This month groups of Erath residents gathered baskets of the little fruits for baking. The Comanches advised people to howl like a wolf before eating the red haws to avoid stomach cramps.

Stephenville Empire; Ellen D. Schulz, Texas Wildflowers, Chicago: Laidlaw Brothers, 1928; Nelson Coon, Using Wild and Wayside Plants, New York: Dover Publications, 1957; Robert Vines, Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines of the Southwest, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1960.

In 1891 vigilantes ordered all black families living along the Paluxy River Valley to abandon their homes and farms and leave Erath County – or be killed. Weatherford Examiner

Thurber, known for bricks and coal, was once the largest city between Fort Worth and El Paso. It was also the first Texas city to have electricity and refrigeration. (there is a story about how shocked and even angry Stephenville residents were on hearing that ice could be produced in the summer). From Thurber shale, 40 varieties of bricks were manufactured and sold state wide. During the 1920s and 1930s the paving bricks were the most popular and were used to pave hundreds of miles of Texas Highways. The brick streets in Stephenville were paved by work gangs largely made up of “Persons who were dellinquent in water bill payments.” Texas Municipalities, 22 (November, 1935), no. 11, and other research.

In December of 1908, Young “hoodlums” broke up another performance at the Crow Opera House with “whistling, clapping of hands, talking, cat calls and shuffling feet.” A stranger remarked: “I have always understood that Stephenville was a great educational center, but there seems to be a mistake.”

Stephenville Tribune