Quanah, Texas -- History in Memories

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Quanah, Texas — History in Memories
Dr. Orville Boyd Jenkins

I grew up in Quanah, Texas, from age 2 1/2 to 15. Quanah was the county seat of Hardeman County, which was bordered on the north by the Red River, with Oklahoma beyond. Quanah was 8 miles from the river. My father established a radio station there in 1951. The station's call letters, KOLJ, were from Dad's initials: Orville L Jenkins.

The town had a population of only about 3300. The county had only one consolidated high school, Quanah High School. But the radio station served a wide area covering several Oklahoma and Texas counties. The station, still operating on the same frequency of AM 1150, is now known as KREL.

In October 2007, I was checking some references on the Internet, and for some reason looked up Quanah. I found an interesting writeup with photos in a Texas Travel site that has much interesting history and culture. There are more photos and information on QuanahNet.

Seeing some photos of buildings in the town brought back memories of childhood places and events.

The Hardeman County Jail
This old jail is the same building and looks just the same as when we lived there. I remember going down there with the kids or youth group from First Baptist Church and singing carols to the prisoners (about 5 or 6 people!).

Police Station
The police station and fire station were together in a facility on 3rd street, a couple of blocks south, across from the post office and next door to the Chevrolet dealer. One summer when I was about 14, I served as the radio dispatcher for the Quanah Police.

We had a couple of exciting events while I was on duty. There was a chase across several counties of north Texas, after a robber robbed a store. He was being pursued by the Texas Highway Patrol with the various localities cooperating as he progressed from west to east.

The building for the fire and police station also housed the city administration offices. On the side street south across from the admin and police building was the auto parts store run by the Newsoms. The Newsoms lived on the next block over from our house across the alley on 12th Street. They went to our church, First Baptist Church. Randy Newsom was the age of my brother Greg.

The Water Tower
The water tower pictured in the Texas Scapes article here was in the lot across the highway from our house. I remember when this was built. This was the new primary water reservoir for the town, which had to pipe its water in from some distance away.

Gypsum
The town could get water from deep wells into the famous Permian Basin, a part of the great Oglala Water Reservoir. This extensive underground natural water reservoir has over the decades continued to get lower and lower. But the gypsum base of the land affected the water.

Only 9 miles west of us was the world's biggest gypsum mine, and the largest production plant of wallboard, which is called sheetrock there, or at least was when I lived there. In other parts of the country, I later heard the word drywall for this sheetrock wallboard. This industry was a major portion of our county's economic base.

On certain days, with the West Texas plains winds, white dust would swirl in the air and settle over everything. On our house plot, we had our own well, which we could use for irrigation of the garden and lawn. In the summer we had to buy water from sources across the Red River in Oklahoma.

I remember the city water always had the taste of iron and gypsum, but the taste became much worse, almost revolting in the summertime. Our well water tasted worse than the city water, but I expect it was quite healthy! But bottled water had not yet become the effete popular product it is now. When we would water our hugely productive truck garden, the whole area would be white, from the high quantity of gypsum in our well water. Yep, this was sheetrock country — we drank it, watered our gardens with it and we covered our walls with it!

New Heights
I remember how amazed we were that this new water tower was going to be 100 feet high. Later in life, I used the image of this tower to gauge how high buildings and towers were!

Tornado Siren
The air raid/tornado siren was placed on top of that tower. This was active during the long tornado season we experience, being in part of the notorious Tornado Alley of North America. This was also the town's fire siren. We were only a few meters from it. That siren could be heard all over town, so it drove us nearly insane every time it went off!

The soda fountain shown here in the drug store looks like the very same one that was there in our time when the store was Johnson's Rexall Drug Store. When I was in about the 5th to 7th grade I would do live commercials for Johnson's on my daily radio program on KOLJ.

I remember that one Mother's Day back in the 1950s it was in Johnson's Drug Store that my two little brothers and I together bought a camera for our mother. Dad took us in there and we all pooled our money to buy that Kodak Brownie camera. She used it until just a few years ago, bringing it with her on two trips to Kenya to visit us, and trips to many other places. It finally got too hard to buy the film for it, and she had to "upgrade" only a few years ago.

The QA&P Railway
The small picture near the end labeled "Museum" is the old railroad station for the Quanah, Acme and Pacific Railway. This was already a derelict when I was a kid. Passengers had to board at the main freight depot, about 2 blocks away over on Main Street at the RR tracks. QA&P was primarily a freight company by then, and was shortly afterwards absorbed into the Frisco line, before 1963 when I moved to Arkansas.

The QA&P was the first railroad in America in which a founding shareholder was an American Indian. Chief Quanah Parker, for whom the town is named, encouraged investment in the modern technology, considered a bane to the Plains Indians and the iron horse cut through hunting lands of the Native Americans. Chief Quanah was an original partner in the QA&P. Cattle shipping was a large part of the early transport business, and the cattle sale barn still was a big operation when I was living in Quanah.

For the Sesquicentennial (150 year anniversary), they remodeled the old depot/station shown here, about one block west of Main, a block north of the Ouanah Hotel. This was the exposition center for the Sesquicentennial of Quanah, and later became a permanent museum.

Farming
Hardeman County was a big ranching area. Cotton had been big there when I was very small. I remember for the first few years in Quanah, we lived a few miles south of town on a cotton farm, renting the main house while the owners, the Stepp family, continued to raise cotton. I remember Eddie Stepp, the son of "Old Man Stepp" who owned the farm, had a daughter about a year younger than me named Mattie.

I remember when I was quite young — I could not have been over 6, since we moved before my 7th birthday — I would stand out in the edge of the field talking to Mr Eddie Stepp about the crop and the cotton picking operation, while he was there on a check of the operation, while the pickers were working. He told me about the plant, the cotton, how the cotton forms in the bolls and then is picked. I always enjoyed learning how things worked, how things grew, how crops were managed and harvested.

Cotton
We lived on this cotton farm through my first grade of school, then moved into town, to 909 West 11th Street, on the west end of town. Eleventh Street of Quanah was the cross-country highway US 287. US Highway 287 was the major east-west route from Florida to California. This highway is still heavily traveled with commercial traffic. Since our time there, Quanah has also built up its tourist trade around its colorful history.

Cotton farming gradually diminished over the years. Wheat was the other major crop I recall. Driving through the area in recent years, I still see wheat growing, but less land than I remember seems to be under wheat cultivation. Of course, with the ranching in the area, hay fields were a beautiful contribution to our flat and featureless land area.

Pumping Gas
Caddy-cornered from our house, across from the lumber company, were the Fitzpatricks. They lived there and operated a gasoline service station and store beside the house. In those days we called these stations "filling stations." Maybe that was the hold-over frontier word. The Fitzpatrick's son David was a couple of years older than me. (No, it must have been more than 2 years.) I would sometimes go across the highway and visit with them. I remember helping pump gas at times when David was on duty.

Laundry and Lumber
Across Combs Street (the north-south street next to our house) was the Bland Lumber Company. After Dad sold Radio Station KOLJ in about 1961, we continued to operate My father bought the corner lot on Combs Street and started a coin-operated laundry. In this business I learned the mechanics of washing and drying machines. I helped my dad repair and totally overhaul these machines. After some time, Dad added a coin-operated dry-cleaning business.

Besides the laundry business, as well as our hugely productive truck garden. In the summer, we operated a truck stop vegetable stall in front of our house, selling the produce. On the quarter block (1/2 acre) plot, we raised all the vegetables we could eat, can, sell and give away. We also had a fruit and nut orchard in the yard and garden, the full 1 acre of our plot. We learned a lot about organic gardening, nutrition, and working with the pattern of nature. We continued to operate the "farm" and the laundry business for a couple more years before we moved to an Arkansas farm.

Cattle
Cattle ranching continued to be a major business for Quanah and Hardeman County. Incidentally, it was in Quanah that I started my minor career as a rancher, with one calf I raised as a 4-H Club project. From this I parlayed my small earnings into a small cattle herd.

The basic cattle investment became a major operation for us when we moved to Arkansas in 1963. My dad and I were joint partners in the cattle business, till I gradually sold off my share to pay for college expenses in the later 60s.

For more on Quanah Parker and Quanah, Texas, on the Internet:
KREL
Quanah High School
Quanah, Texas
QuanahNet
Quanah Parker — Comanche Lodge
Quanah Parker — TexasEscapes

OBJ

First notes on Quanah written in October 2007
Finalized and posted on Ideas and Interests 13-14 November 2007
Revised 30 September 2008

Email: orville@jenkins.nu

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