by Mike Cox
The Top O’ Hill did have its detractors. Particularly outspoken in his condemnation was Dr. J. Frank Norris, pastor of Fort Worth’s First Baptist Church, one of the nation’s largest congregations. Law enforcement periodically raided the casino, but its operators never seemed taken by surprise. That led to the firing of ranger captain Tom Hickman, who on governor’s orders led a raid on the place in 1935 and arrived to find that someone had tipped off the management. Though the DPS never proved it, Hickman was the prime suspect.
In 1947, Captain Manuel T. “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas and his men had better luck, catching the place in full swing. At the end of the day, what finally put the Top O’ Hill at the bottom of the heap was the Baptist church. Dr. Norris used the root of all evil to fight sin, buying the place in 1956 and converting the property into what is now Arlington Baptist College.
Top O’ Hill Terrace is a blight on Tarrant County. One of these days we are going to own the place!
–Reverend J. Frank Norris
Visit: 3001 West Division Street, Arlington. Tours of the old sin den are available for a small fee. Visit topohillterrace.com.
Fort Worth
BATTLE OF VILLAGE CREEK
Seeing the line of mounted rangers quietly approaching her people’s village, an Indian woman screamed a warning as Edward Tarrant ordered his men to charge. Galloping toward the creek separating the Texans from the Indians, one of the riders shot the fleeing Indian, not realizing he had killed a female.
In what came to be called the Battle of Village Creek, on May 24, 1841, a force of sixty rangers attacked two large villages made up of Cherokees and several other tribes along Village Creek in what is now Tarrant County. The rangers killed at least twelve Indians, with numerous tribespeople wounded. The Indians killed one ranger, Captain John B. Denton, and two Texans suffered wounds.
The following day, the rangers buried Denton about twenty-five miles from where he had died, but his bones would not permanently rest in peace for sixty years.
The Indian yells and firing soon ceased and both parties left the ground. It was not the wish of General Tarrant to take any prisoners. The women and children alone we suffered to escape if they wished, and the men neither asked, gave, nor received any quarter.
–William N. Porter to Secretary of War Branch T. Archer,
June 5, 1841
Visit: The fight occurred along Village Creek, most of which Lake Arlington later inundated. A 1936 granite historical marker placed near the site was later relocated to the southwest corner of Spur 303 and West Green Oaks Boulevard, Arlington. Just to the west of this marker, at the seventh tee on Lake Arlington Golf Course (1516 Green Oaks), is a marker expanding on the early history of the area.
BIRD’S FORT
Rangers returned to future Tarrant County in the fall of 1841 to build a log blockhouse on the Trinity River, the beginning of what would grow into the western half of the sprawling Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex.
Major Jonathan Bird and twenty-nine rangers established the fort that October. A few families soon settled about three miles west of the fort, the beginning of Birdville. Following the creation of Tarrant County in 1849, Birdville was the first county seat.
Visit: A historical marker placed in 1936 near the site of the fort was moved in 2003 to River Legacy Park in Arlington, one mile north of the Trinity River.
EDWARD H. TARRANT (1799–1858)
Born in South Carolina, Tarrant spent time in Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi before coming to Texas in 1835. Settling in Red River County, he represented that area in the Republic of Texas Congress but resigned in 1837 to campaign against hostile Indians. Elected general in command of a ranger-like unit, he was the ranking officer in the Battle of Village Creek. But two years later, he demonstrated a preference for peace in helping negotiate an Indian treaty at Bird’s Fort that cleared the way for settlement between the Red River and the Trinity.
Tarrant lived to see the county he had helped clear of hostile Indians named in his honor in 1849. He later moved to a farm in Ellis County and served in the Texas legislature after statehood. He intended to move to the Fort Belknap area in Young County but had to delay that because of Indian trouble, which led him back to rangering from 1857 to 1858. On a trip from Ellis County to Fort Belknap, Tarrant became ill and died in Parker County on August 2, 1858. Seven months later, his remains were relocated to his property in Ellis County. He was moved a third time on March 3, 1928, this time to Fort Worth.
Visit: Pioneer Rest Cemetery, 620 Samuels Avenue, Fort Worth. A historical marker stands near his grave.
PARKER LOG CABIN
Isaac Parker, whose niece Cynthia Ann had been taken captive by Comanches in their 1836 attack on Fort Parker, built a log cabin at Birdville in the 1850s.
In early January 1861, when word reached Parker that a white woman had been captured in the Pease River fight, he believed she might be his long-lost niece Cynthia Ann. He traveled from Birdville to Camp Cooper, where the Rangers had taken her, and through an interpreter identified her as Cynthia Ann. Parker took the woman and her daughter to his cabin in Birdville, and he and his family cared for her until she moved to Anderson County.
Parker left the Birdville cabin in 1872, settling in Parker County. The cabin stood abandoned until 1929 when it was moved to Shady Oak Farms in Fort Worth. It now is one of several historic structures preserved in Log Cabin Village. Still standing at the original site of Parker’s cabin are several old trees known as the Parker Oaks.
Isaac Parker brought his niece to his log cabin in Birdville following her rescue by rangers twenty-four years after Comanches captured her in East Texas. Author’s collection.
Visit: The oaks are adjacent to the Parker Cemetery on Cardinal Road, east of Loop 820 in Hurst. Log Cabin Village, 2100 Log Cabin Village Lane, Fort Worth.
JAMES MADISON BROWN (1838-1892)
James Brown served as a ranger from April to November 1875, but his passion for gambling on horses teamed with an otherwise fast lifestyle got him eternally corralled six feet under. He had been a state policeman prior to his time in the Rangers, and was sheriff of Lee County from 1876 to 1884. In that capacity he presided over the hanging of outlaw Bill Longley in 1878. From 1888 to 1892 the former ranger lived in Fort Worth, living the sporting life. Brown’s figurative horse came in last on September 6, 1892 at the Garfield Park Race Track in Chicago when a Windy City policeman killed him in a gunfight. The National Association for Outlaw and Lawman History placed a new marker on his grave in 2006.
Visit: Oakwood Cemetery, 701 Grand Avenue.
HELL’S HALF ACRE
When the first locomotive puffed into Cowtown in 1876, the need soon arose for a venue where all the buffalo hunters, cowboys, drummers, freighters, gamblers, outlaws and railroad men descending on the city could let off a little steam of their own. A fourteen-block red-light district with saloons, gambling halls and bordellos grew rapidly.
During its heyday, outlaws like Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, Longhair Jim Courtright, Luke Short, Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid and lesser lights all contributed to the local economy. Rangers were there, too, officially and, boys being boys, unofficially.
Acording to the November 29, 1878 Fort Worth Democrat, Hell’s Half Acre’s denizens included “lewd women of all ages 16 to 40…the most respectable of citizens, the experienced thief…the ordinary murderer, the average cowboy and the ordinary young man about town.”
Hell’s Half Acre remained a popular Fort Worth destination until the commander of the army’s Camp Bowie pressed city officials to shut it down during World War I.
Visit: South end of downtown, along Commerce and Calhoun Streets. The area was cleared in the 1960s to make room for the Tarrant County Convention Center.
U.S. COURTHOUSE
Outlaw Sam Bass is reputed to have spent time and money in the bars and brothels of Hell’s Half Acre before a ranger’s bullet ended his wild oat sowing. None of those old dives remain,
but Bass and the Frontier Battalion still have a Cowtown presence. With federal Depression-era public art money, in 1940, Frank A. Mechau Jr. painted two large Ranger-related works for the fourth-floor courtroom of the U.S. Appeals Court in the 1933-vintage Federal Courthouse. The oils are The Taking of Sam Bass and Texas Rangers in Camp.
Visit: 501 West Tenth Street. Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Museum, 1005 Congress Avenue, Suite 825.
The Amon Carter Museum, 3501 Camp Bowie Boulevard, has one of the nation’s largest collections of Western art, including many works by Frederick Remington and Charles Russell.
WHEELER COUNTY
Mobeetie
LAW COMES TO THE PANHANDLE
Alerted that a party of Pueblo Indians leading a dozen pack animals had been seen riding east across the Panhandle, Captain G.W. Arrington immediately ordered his rangers to mount up.
The lawmen caught up with the Indians near Fort Elliott, a cavalry post adjacent to Mobeetie in present Wheeler County. As Arrington suspected, the New Mexican Indians had been smuggling old rifles intended for trade to the Comanches newly relegated to a reservation in Indian Territory. When the ranking officer at the fort heard what happened, he dispatched a company to take the Indians into federal custody as wards of the government.
Old jail at Mobeetie, where Captain George W. Arrington protected the Panhandle in the late 1870s. Photo courtesy Debby Arrington.
Seeing the soldiers riding fast toward him, Arrington had his rangers dismount and rest their Winchesters across their horses—muzzles pointed at the approaching bluecoats. It ended peacefully, but not before harsh words from both sides, followed later by a flurry of official correspondence between Washington and Austin. The ranger buried the contraband weapons and sent the Pueblos back to New Mexico with a warning not to come back. Nothing came of the military’s protest.
Arrington’s Company C had established Camp Roberts at Blanco Canyon in present Crosby County in the late summer of 1879. Until he left the Rangers in 1882, the captain and his rangers stayed busy in the Panhandle, handling everything from escorting surveying parties to enforcing the law in the area’s two settlements—Tascosa and Mobeetie.
Following his state service, Arrington stayed in the Panhandle. He served as Wheeler County sheriff from 1882 to 1890 but also grew wheat and raised cattle on land he purchased in Hemphill County. He died in 1923.
Visit: A historical marker commemorating Arrington stands in front of the former Wheeler County Jail in Old Mobeetie, south of State Highway 152. His grave lies in the Mobeetie Cemetery, two and a half miles south of New Mobeetie on County Road H. The captain’s heirs still operate the Arrington Ranch, 9765 County Road 5, Canadian. A two-story frame house Arrington built on the ranch in 1919 still stands, now a bed-and-breakfast.
Mobeetie Old Jail Museum. Arrington officed in the 1886 jail during his last two terms as sheriff. River Valley Pioneer Museum, 118 North Second Street, Canadian. The museum has an exhibit on the Arrington family and ranch.
WICHITA COUNTY
Wichita Falls
TWO BANK ROBBERS GET “SUSPENDED” SENTENCES
Only a historical marker at the entrance of a modern high-rise in downtown Wichita Falls remains as a reminder of what happened there on February 25, 1896—an incident that proved both the effectiveness and one of the weaknesses of the rangers.
After cowboys Foster Crawford and Elmer “Kid” Lewis robbed the City National Bank and killed a popular teller, Captain Bill McDonald and some of his men tracked down the pair after a local posse had given up. That demonstrated what the rangers generally excelled at. But when the rangers moved on to another task, assuming that the criminal justice process in Wichita County would proceed routinely, the captain soon received word that both suspects had been taken from the county jail and strung up in front of the bank they had robbed. Rangers couldn’t be everywhere.
Visit: The marker is at 800 Scott Street. The bank where the robbery occurred stood at the corner of Seventh and Ohio Streets. As the outlaws fled town, someone killed one of their horses. The owner of that horse, which had been stolen, had one of the animal’s hooves converted by a taxidermist into a jewelry box for his wife. That unusual item is on display at the Museum of North Texas History, 720 Indiana Avenue.
Two bank robbers were lynched near this spot in Wichita Falls after rangers tracked them down and then, as it turned out, left town too soon. Photo by Mike Cox.
Burkburnett
Burkburnett became an oil boomtown in 1918-1919, later inspiring the classic 1941 Clark Gable movie Boomtown. A legal dispute with Oklahoma over oil drilling rights along the nearby Red River led the governor to send rangers in 1920 to assert state control. The situation remained peaceful, if tense, and was resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Rangers went to Wichita County in 1920 during a dispute with Oklahoma over oil-rich land along the Red River. Author’s collection.
Visit: A 1966 historical marker off State Highway 267, just west of Interstate 44 in Burkburnett tells the story of the oil boom. Two markers deal with the situation that brought in rangers, one placed in 1977 at the ghost town of Bridgetown on State Highway 240, six miles west of Burkburnett, and one erected in 1981 at the same location discussing Receiver Bridge, a structure built over the river during the time the disputed area was under federal receivership.
Appendix A
SELECTED ADDITIONAL TEXAS RANGER–RELATED HISTORICAL MARKERS
ARCHER COUNTY
Archer City
Camp Cuerton, Civil War Ranger camp four miles east of present Archer City. Named for ranger captain James Jackson “Jack” Cureton (1826–1881). Marker placed in 1963. Courthouse lawn, Center Street.
BANDERA COUNTY
Bandera
HICKS RANCH HOUSE
Stone and cypress house built in 1855 for former ranger Fabian L. Hicks (1828–1899). Marker placed 1965. From Bandera take Farm to Market Road 3240 eight miles southwest to ranch entrance, just before junction with Farm to Market Road 2828.
CAMP MONTEL
Civil War Ranger camp. Marker placed in 1964. Courthouse grounds, 504 Main Street. Camp stood twenty-five miles west and one mile south of Farm to Market Road 470.
POLLY’S CHAPEL
Jose Policarpo Rodriquez (1829–1914) served as a U.S. Army scout before settling in Bandera County near the Privilege Creek community in 1858. During the Civil War, he rode as a ranger in Bandera County to protect the area from Indians. In 1882, having converted to Methodism and become a minister, he built a stone chapel where he preached. Nearby, he also built a school. Marker placed in 1965. State Highway 16 from Bandera eight miles to Privilege Creek Bridge, north on County Road and drive three miles to chapel.
BASTROP COUNTY
Bastrop
OLD JENKINS HOME
Built circa 1836, one of the oldest surviving frame structures in Texas. First home of Sarah Jenkins, whose first husband was killed and scalped by Indians and whose second husband died in the Alamo. Her son John Holmes Jenkins (1822–1890) served as a ranger and also wrote a memoir giving much insight into the early Anglo settlement of Texas. Marker placed 1964. 1710 North Main Street.
WALLACE-HOLME HOUSE
Built circa 1840, house assumed its basic appearance in 1887. One of its early owners was James P. “One Eye” Wallace (1819–1855), a Republic of Texas–era ranger. He lost an eye during an Indian fight in Limestone County and also participated in the Runaway Scrape. Marker placed 1991. 907 Pine Street.
BELL COUNTY
Belton
FORT GRIFFIN
Site of Republic of Texas–era Ranger blockhouse. Marker placed in 1936. Five miles southeast of Belton on Farm to Market Road 436 at Hartrick Bluff Spur.
LITTLE RIVER FORT
Site of Republic of Texas–era Ranger blockhouse. Marker placed in 1969. Two miles north of Belton on Interstate 35, roadside park at Lampasas River bridge.
BEXAR COUNTY
San Antonio
> OGE HOUSE
First floor built circa 1857. Former ranger Louis Oge (1832–1915), who served with Bigfoot Wallace, moved into the house in 1881 and had noted architect Alfred Giles expand it in neoclassical style. Marker placed 1971. 209 Washington Street.
CAPTAIN LEE HALL (1849–1911)
Frontier Battalion ranger, 1876–80. Marker placed in 1970. Old National Cemetery, between Paso Hondo and Center Streets. Famed short story writer William Sydney Porter (better known as O. Henry) lived for two years on a La Salle County ranch Hall managed after leaving the Rangers. Porter later based several of his short stories on tales he heard from Hall.
BREWSTER COUNTY
Alpine
J.C. BIRD HOUSE
Julius C. Bird (1863–1925), Frontier Battalion ranger. Marker placed in 2013. Front of house, 208 East Lockhart Street.
BRISCOE COUNTY
Silverton
WILLIAM MOTEN VAUGHAN (1841–1928)
Civil War ranger. Marker placed in 1971. Take State Highway 86 one mile east from Silverton, turn south on dirt road for half a mile, then west to Silverton Cemetery.
BROWN COUNTY
Brownwood
ADAMS-SHAW HOUSE
Quarried sandstone house built circa 1876 for former ranger and cattle rancher George H. Adams (1842–1920). Adams had his brand carved into the front stop. Marker placed 1975. 1600 Shaw Drive.
CAMP COLLIER
Civil War Ranger camp. Marker placed in 1963. Courthouse grounds, Broadway and Center Streets. Campsite thirteen miles southwest of Brownwood.