The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer
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CHAPTER XXIX
IN THE VALLEY OF THE DOG EAR
The boom in Megory and Calias took such proportions that it made everyinvestor prosperous, a goodly number of whom sold out, settled inAmoureaux, and the beautiful townsite soon became one of the mostpopular trade centers in the new county. It was the only townsite wheretrees stood, and the investors thought it a great thing that they wouldnot have to wait a score of years to grow them.
Among the money investors in the town was old Dad Durpee, the formerOristown and Megory stage driver. When talking with him one day he toldme he had saved three thousand dollars while running the stage line andhad several good horses besides. "Dad," as he was familiarly called, hadinvested a part of his bank account in a corner lot and put up atwo-story building, and soon became an Amoureaux booster. Old "Dad"opened up a stage line between Calias and the new town, but this linedid not pay as well as the old one, for no one rode with him except whenthe weather was bad, as the people were all riding now in automobiles.In a short time every line of business was represented in Amoureaux andwhen the settlers began to arrive, Amoureaux did a flourishing business.
In coming from Calias, the trail led over a monstrous hill, and from thetop "Amro," the name having been shortened, nestling in the valleybelow, reminding me of Mexico City as it appeared from the highlandsnear Cuernavaca. A party from Hedrick, by the name of Van Neter, built ahotel fifty by one hundred feet, with forty rooms, and during theopening and filing made a small fortune. The house was always full andhigh prices were charged, and thus Amro prospered.
During the month of April the promoters succeeded in having the governorcall an election to organize the county, the election to be held in Junefollowing. The filing had been made in April and May, and as conditionswere, no one could vote except cowboys, Indians and mixed-bloods. In theelection Amro won the county seat, and settlers moving into the countywere exceedingly mortified over the fact, having to be governed eighteenmonths by an outlaw set who had deprived them of a voice in theorganization of the county. As Amro had won, it soon became the centralcity and grew, as Calias had grown, and in a short time had a half-dozengeneral stores, two garages, four hotels, four banks, and every otherline of business that goes to make up a western town. Its four liverybarns did all the business their capacity would permit, while thesaloons and gamblers feasted on the easy eastern cash that fell intotheir pockets. In July the lot sales of the government towns were held,but only one amounted to much, that town being farthest west and milesfrom the eastern line of the county. This was Ritten, and under a rulingof the Interior Department, a deposit of twenty-five dollars wasaccepted on an option of sixty days, after which a payment of one-halfthe price of the lot was required. Here it must be said that almostevery dollar invested on the Little Crow had been doubled in a shorttime, and in many instances a hundred dollars soon grew to a thousand ormore.
Practically all the lowest number holders had filed around Ritten,including numbers one and two. Ever since the opening of Oklahoma in1901, when number one took a claim adjoining the city of Lawton, and theowner is said to have received thirty thousand dollars for it, theholder of number one in every opening of western land since has been avery conspicuous figure, and this was not lost on the holder of numberone in Tipp county--who was a divorced woman. She took her claimadjoining the town of Ritten, which fact brought the town considerableattention. The lots in the town brought the highest price of any whichhad been sold in any town on the Little Crow, up to that time, severalhaving sold for from one thousand, two hundred to one thousand, fourhundred dollars and one as high as two thousand and fifty dollars.
The town of Amro, being surrounded by Indian allotments, had fewsettlers in its immediate vicinity. The Indians, profiting by theirexperience in Megory county, where they learned that good location meantincrease in the value of their lands, had, in selecting allotments,taken nearly all the land just west of Amro, as they had takenpractically all of the good land just west of Calias in the eastern partof Tipp county. The good land all over the county had been picked overand the Indians had selected much of the best, but Tipp county is alarge one, and several hundred thousand acres of good land wereavailable for homesteading, though much scattered as to location.
When July arrived and still no surveyors for the railroad company hadput in their appearance, it was feared that no extension work would becommenced that year, but shortly after the lot sale at Ritten, thesurveyors arrived in the county and ran a survey west from Calias elevenmiles to a town named after the Colones, referred to, striking the town,then proceeding northwest, missing Amro and crossing the Dog Ear abouttwo miles north of the town, then following a divide almost due west tothe county line on the west, running just south of a conspicuous rangeof hills known as the "Red Hills," missing every town in the countyexcept Colone. This caused a temporary check in the excitement aroundAmro, but as it had the county seat it felt secure, as a county seatmeans much to a western village, and felt the railroad would eventuallygo there. In fact the citizens of the town boasted that the road couldnot afford to miss it, pointing with pride to the many teams to be seenin her streets daily and the bee-like activity of the town in general. Ivisited the town many times, but from the first time I saw the place Ifelt sure the railroad would never go there as two miles to the northwas the natural divide, that the survey had followed all the way fromColone to the Dog Ear and on to the west side of the county, which is anatural right-of-way. When I argued with the people in the town, thatAmro would not get the railroad, I brought out a storm of protest.