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    Around Aledo
    Around Aledo
    Around Aledo
    Ebook191 pages52 minutes

    Around Aledo

    By Susan McKeague Karnes and Homer Norris

    ()

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    About this ebook

    In the mid-19th century, a few hardy settlers of European descent carved out farms in the Clear Fork Valley of present-day Parker County, attracted by the area's springs, tributaries, and a burgeoning market in nearby Fort Worth. For centuries, Comanche and Kiowa had inhabited the land, and a period of dramatic conflict ensued, exacerbated by the Civil War absence of able-bodied husbands and sons. By 1880, ranches and settlements flourished, aided by the Fort Worth-Yuma cattle trail and a Texas and Pacific Railway line connecting Fort Worth to the county seat of Weatherford. As the first mail stop in the newly formed county, Aledo was briefly dubbed Parker Station before having its name changed in 1882--a bow to a railroad engineer's Illinois hometown. Today segments of Bankhead Highway, the nation's first paved transcontinental highway, wind around Aledo, the Annettas, Willow Park, and Hudson Oaks, thriving communities that offer a pastoral lifestyle minutes from the urban amenities of the Fort Worth-Dallas Metroplex. Mere fragments remain of Newburg, Prairie Hill, Willow Springs, and other old settlements, visible only to old-timers and lost to living memory.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439624654
    Around Aledo
    Author

    Susan McKeague Karnes

    Author Susan McKeague Karnes lives in Annetta North, one of several small cities around Aledo. Fascinated by Parker County�s rich Western history, she collected these images to honor the bygone stewards of her adopted home.

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      Around Aledo - Susan McKeague Karnes

      satisfaction.

      INTRODUCTION

      At first glance, the history of eastern Parker County seems to be the quintessential tale of the American West, rife with cowboys and Indians, conflict and compromise, depredation and deprivation. Of course, the actual story began much earlier than this. Ice Age climate changes crafted the soil foundations of Texas prairies, and melting glaciers created the Trinity and Brazos watersheds. Mammoths, bison, and camels thrived, and eventually, the first people arrived.

      For hundreds of years, the Kiowa and Nüma-nu (Comanche) inhabited the land. Nomadic hunters and gatherers, masters of the plains and the horse, these Native American bands lived in seasonal encampments of teepees and followed herds of buffalo.

      Early settlers from nearby Southern states arrived in the mid-19th century, attracted by the clear waters and sandy loam soil along the broad Clear Fork of the Trinity River, Mary’s Creek, and the Bear Creeks. By 1855 farms, ranches, and tiny settlements dotted the land, and residents formed a county named for state representative Isaac Parker, with Weatherford as its seat.

      A few pioneers in the new settlements of Center, Alma, Dicey, Newburg, and Elm Springs owned slaves; most did not. The majority, however, were sympathetic to the Confederate cause. As the Civil War erupted, the county voted 535 to 61 in favor of secession. By late 1861, most men under the age of 45 had joined the cause, leaving women, children, and the older and infirm to defend homes and property.

      As the war began, raids by the Native Americans were already common. Settlers dreaded full moons, since raiding parties often would take advantage of the moonlight to steal horses and other valuables. With the Civil War, however, came heightened conflict, exacerbated by the absence of able-bodied husbands and sons. From 1858 until 1872, when peace between whites and the Plains Indians finally prevailed, Parker County endured more raids (many marked by violence and death) than any other county in Texas, according to 19th-century historian J. W. Wilbarger. Henry Smythe estimated property damage at more than $6 million.

      Many died at the hands of raiding parties. An estimated 400 settlers were taken into captivity, a practice perhaps encouraged by a mutual hostage market and exchange between the Plains Indians and the government. And the raids ran both ways. Settlers organized posses and brandished their own form of justice. Some took scalps of their Comanche or Kiowa conquests.

      In the end, the tenacious settlers persevered, and their communities began to grow. By 1870, there were schools at Bear Creek, Alma, and O’Neal Springs. Freight wagons ambled to market, piled high with buffalo hides.

      In 1875, Comanche chief Quanah Parker recognized that the buffalo had been decimated, the prairie belonged to settlers, and the Comanches’ future depended on peaceful assimilation. He struck an accord with the U.S. government and led his people into the difficult transition from their nomadic ways to farming on government-issued land in

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