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Words,
and even pictures, cannot begin to tell what my visit to the site of the 1936
Texas Centennial Pictograph Marker was like. If only I had taken Gerald
Massey's advice and purchased a digital voice recorder. That would have been
a big help to me in telling the story of my meeting Kay and Fred Campbell.
The
Pictograph Marker
is located near the Concho River on private property just north of Paint
Rock, county seat of Concho County, Texas. I almost gave up seeing the marker
after finding the gate locked at the entrance to the Campbell Ranch. Ruthie's
notes gave no more information than where the ranch was located. I went back to
Paint Rock and stopped
at the Courthouse.
I asked if anyone knew how I might contact someone to see the Marker
and was given a copy of the Treasures of Concho County Brochure which had the
phone number to Paint Rock Excursions, Indian
Pictographs. |
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I
dialed the
number. A delightful voice answered. I asked if I could see the Pictograph
Marker located on their property. She said I could but she would have to meet
me at the gate. It would be a few minutes because she had just fixed a cup of
hot chocolate. Thus began a visit I will long remember.
At that point,
I didn't know her first name and wouldn't have addressed her with it anyway, so
I'll just call her Jewel in this little narrative because that is what she was
with a special sparkle in her eyes. You can only imagine how her voice was like
a rainbow. |
"She
laughed and joked the whole time I was there."
Photo
Courtesy Barclay
Gibson, January 2010 |
| I mentioned the name
of Ruthie Cade to her and that brought
on a cheerful laugh. She began telling me stories about Ruthie's visits. Jewel
said Ruthie is a Retired Army Colonel. She had some friends with her whom Jewel
call 'Her Walkers' because they walked all over the ranch and, I believe, camped
there, too. She mentioned Ruthie and ‘Her Walkers’ many times during my visit.
Jewel said she would have to ride with me in my pickup because her husband had
their pickup and he got upset with her because she got so many flat tires on her
little Ford Focus. She had to get out and open all the gates because they had
combinations locks. She asked me how many Centennial
Markers I had seen and I told her I have not counted them. She chided me for
not keeping better records. |
"She
had to get out and open all the gates..."
Photo
Courtesy Barclay
Gibson, January 2010 |
Lambs
with their mothers in Campbell Ranch
Photo
Courtesy Barclay
Gibson, January 2010 |
Jewel began to tell
me a series of stories about their sheep, goat, llama and donkey ranch, about
her husband, Fred's world wide reputation as a sheep fiber expert, and that he
had just received a special Sheep Council award in Nashville. She told me of her
teaching days in Clayton, NM, before they married, of how her grandfather preserved
the Indian
Pictographs. Her father died in 1932 right in the bottom of the Depression
leaving her mother with anywhere from eight to twelve children, but who's counting
when there are that many, and of the mortgage on this ranch of $110,000, roughly
$1,400,000 in today's dollars.
She told me that her mother worked extra
jobs to raise her children and pay off the mortgage, how the government even back
then was making life so hard for ranchers with new rules and regulations, that
her uncle survived WWI only to die
of Pneumonia on the troop ship coming back home so that Jewel's grandmother had
to go to the train station to pick up the casket rather than meet her son returning
from the Great War. |
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The
Pictograph Centennial Marker
Photo
Courtesy Barclay
Gibson, January 2010 |
Jewel was a girl of
nine years old in 1936 when Texas celebrated the centennial of its independence
from Mexico partly by placing granite
markers all over the state. She is certainly one of the very few if not the
only living person to have seen a Centennial
Marker when it was placed and still lives on that very same property. One
of the men who helped place it, James Ashford, was 18 years old at the time and
has stayed in touch with the family all these years until just recently when he
was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
She laughed and joked the whole
time I was there. She was constantly telling me to slow down, don't hit that stump
or it will give you a flat tire and turn here down that rutted trail. We pulled
up to some goat and sheep pin. She showed me Blue Bell, her prized Angora Goat.
I asked her if the marker was located here. She adamantly said, “No, it wasn't
there because, you didn't turn when I told you to." We went back and I was supposed
to have turned where there wasn't even a trail. No wonder I missed it. As we pulled
up to the marker she kept telling me to slow down and don't run off that seventy
foot cliff. |
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The
marker near the edge of the seventy foot cliff
Photo
Courtesy Barclay
Gibson, January 2010 |
| The Marker is, indeed,
located very near the edge of a cliff. I took pictures of it, and I then carefully
followed her directions back around to the base of the cliff. There is a perfectly
level plain of probably ten acres right on the banks of the Concho River where
maybe a hundred sheep had just given birth or were in the process. It was from
the base that we could see the Indian
Pictographs. There are close to 1,500 paintings that are now protected
from vandals and rock hunters. |
Sheep
on the banks of the
Concho River
Photo
Courtesy Barclay
Gibson, January 2010 |
On our way back
to the house, with Jewel closing the gates behind us, Fred drove up with a load
of feed in the back of his pickup. He didn’t have much to say when she introduced
me. His knowing smile let me know that he knew I knew the history of not only
the marker but of the ranch, the animals, the pictographs, the Campbell family
and a whole lot more.
My visit to the ranch must have been at least a full
hour, and when I left I knew I had met two very special people who are outstanding
examples of what opportunities, through hardship, hard work and perseverance,
are available in our great country.
In perspective, my desire to see granite
Centennial marker hardly enters into the equation at all. I didn't know how to
start this little narrative and now certainly don't know how to end it except
to say I am privileged and humbled to have been in the presence of two living
granite markers whose significance far outweighs any mere slab of stone. I will
remember the Campbells much longer than I will remember the reason for my visit
in the first place.
I hope this makes some sense to you as it is so difficult
to re-tell something that impressed me so much.
© Barclay
Gibson
June
1, 2012
The
Pictograph Centennial Marker |
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Marker
Text:
LARGEST PICTOGRAPH
SITE IN TEXAS
1500 Paintings by Various Tribes
at Widely Differing Dates are Scattered Along the Bluff for a Half Mile
Most
Outstanding Pictorial Contribution of the Nomadic Tribes of Texas |
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