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Squaw Mountain community

Joined
Jun 7, 2006
Messages
5,848
Reaction score
9
Location
Exit. Stage West.
Squaw Mountain, Jack County.
Historical marker: FM 2190
N 33.36433
W098.32640


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On my way north up to Oklahoma last Friday I rode through two ghost towns. One I stopped to spend some time in.

This is excerpted from my story of that weekend:

On FM 2190 I passed Lynn Creek Rd to see a small church off the road and shaded by a tree-covered hill. Bingo; the familiar Texas Historical Society marker alongside the road. Executing a perfect U-turn I pulled up to stand on the grassy bank in front of the marker, dismounted and looked around.

According to all the resources I’ve read (and there aren’t many), a skirmish between a group of Texas Rangers and a band of Indians occurred here in 1875. A young Indian woman was killed on a mountain near Lynn Creek and the Rangers buried her there. The peak was named Squaw Mountain based on the legend, and the community that grew up along the creek and near the mountain also bore that name.

Settlers arrived in 1877 and Squaw Mountain grew. In 1892, along with a stage relay stop, a post office was named. Later followed cotton gins and a thresher, blacksmith shop, store, school and another church. Coal mines were discovered in 1917.

But, as the familiar pattern with pioneer towns, the exodus followed the railroads. By 1997 only a church and a few ranches remained. The only business I’m aware of is a large big game ranch with a lodge, cabins, elk, deer, axis, oryx, hogs, Dall and Corsican sheep, turkey, and dove, 20 ponds and a lake. Even that was listed for sale in the mid-2000’s; only for $3 million.

Yet many of the original settlers, some of their descendants and families, still remain here at rest in a cemetery a few miles away down a lonely gravel and dirt road. [Lynn Cemetery; included in main story]

Other than a small modest building serving as a church for the neighboring farmers and ranchers, nothing else betrays presence of a community that once stood here. Cows grazed in a pasture across the road, giving me an occasional glare. But the surrounding Cross-timbers and mesquite thickets betray nothing; no town, no stage coaches, no cotton fields, no comfortable community with a few bustling business.

Like most other ghost towns, Nature reclaims her own.

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