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Texas
Ghost Town
SPANISH
FORT, TEXAS
Montague County,
North Central Texas
FM 103
17 miles North of Nocona, just South of the Red River
Cities within 60 miles: Decatur,
Gainsville
and Wichita
Falls
Population: 50 (1999)
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Text and photos
by Robin Jett |
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The
store
Photo courtesy Robin Jett |
History in
a Pecan Shell
The Roads of Texas atlas
AND Ghost Towns of Texas by T. Lindsay Baker claim that
Spanish Fort is a ghost town - but when I visited it, quite a few
live souls waved at me from their riding lawn mowers. However, when
taking into account the colorful history of this now-sleepy town on
the banks of the river that runs red (ok, most of the time it's brown),
the term "ghost town" aptly describes this community.
The site that Spanish Fort now occupies was once a Taovaya Indian
village. Mostly, the natives peacefully farmed and traded with the
French. In 1759, Spanish troops under Diego Ortiz Parilla tried to
claim the territory after a Taovaya and Comanche raid on the San Saba
mission. To thwart the Spanish, the Taovaya built a large fort, surrounding
it by a moat. The Taovaya and Comanche tribes (some say with French
help, although that was probably not likely) captured a Spanish canon,
and used it successfully in a battle that made the Lords of the South
run for the hills. If the natives had known high-fives back then,
they probably would've exchanged several.
But the history of the Western Frontier proved that peace never remained
for long. In the 1830s, American settlers, in their good ol' manifest
ways, decided that the fort they found in the fertile Red River valley
should be rightfully theirs. Since they thought it belonged to the
Spanish (may have been the canon that led them to this conclusion),
they named the "new" town they founded Spanish Fort. The Taovaya,
decimated by smallpox, decided that the neighborhood was going to
the birds, so they headed west and merged with the Wichita. |
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The
School
Photo courtesy Robin Jett |
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Soon, the Chisholm
Trail cut its way to Spanish Fort, which now had a population of
about 1,000. The crossing at the Red River signaled the entry into
untamed Indian Territory, which provided the cowhands a reason to
need lots of wine, women, and song. Spanish Fort complied by opening
4 hotels, several saloons, bordellos, and a few specialty shops,
including the first store of that famous cobbler H.J. Justin. The
town also boasted a doctor, who remained busy tending to the dying
after gunfights. It has been told that on one Christmas morning,
4 men found their way into the red soil of the Spanish Fort cemetery
after an all-night poker game at the Cowboy saloon went awry. Ghost
Towns tells of the cemetery holding 43 graves: 3 suicides and 40
murders.
Once the railroad made the Chisholm Trail obsolete, Spanish Fort
lost its glory. Being so remote from major roads and rail lines,
the inhabitants moved south to greener pastures. By the turn of
the century the rough trail town quieted into a laid-back, tiny
community. With the discovery of oil in fields surrounding Spanish
Fort, the town rebounded long enough to open a schoolhouse in 1924,
but now it too sits forgotten along the road that once lead cattle
across the banks of the Red River.
©
Robin Jett
May 2002
Bibliography:
Baker, T. Lindsay. Ghost Towns of Texas. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1986.
Farman, Irvin. Standard of the West. Fort Worth: TCU Press, 1996.
Jelks, B. Edward. Taovaya Indians. Handbook of Texas On-line.
Texas A&M University. The Roads of Texas. Fredericksburg, TX: Shearer
Publishing, 1988, rev. 1995,1999.
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