There is a story that illustrates the lush grasses in the 1870s before barbed-wire fences made it possible to crowd cattle and destroy the land by over-grazing. A teenage girl fell from her horse and broke her leg near Alarm Creek, a few yards from the Alexander-Stephenville spur of the Chisholm Trail. On the approach of the Chidster Stage, the girl held her bonnet up on a stick which was noticed by the coach passengers. Some of the travelers warned that it might be a Comanche ploy, but a physician from San Antonio insisted on approaching the bonnet and found the grateful girl. Her leg was set and she was delivered to her house. Today a traveler can pause on the Alexander road near Alarm Creek and grimly note that the area looks like a blast site, non-native stubble and rocks mark the site where tall grasses had hidden the girl. In the 1870s Alarm Creek was deep enough to drown that girl’s family goat. Now the creek is bone dry except for a fifteen minute trickle after a rain. The only native grasses to be seen survive between the fence and the the paved road, just out of reach of too many cattle.

This is one of the stories that I collected by interviewing residents at Stephenville nursing homes.