Old Tascosa on the Great Plains of the Texas Panhandle.

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Old Tascosa, cowboy capital of the plains, lay one-half mile northeast. In its brief span it became the center of the open-range world. Stomping ground for some of the West's most notorious bad men and focal point for cattle thieves and ranchmen.

Because of the easy crossing of the Canadian River at the site, it early became a meeting place where Indians and Mexican traders (Comancheros) exchanged contraband goods, including women and children. With the passing of the buffalo came the first permanent settlement, made by Mexican sheepherders in 1876. Charles Goodnight and Thomas S. Bugbee brought the first cattle to the free-grass empire the same year. Smaller ranchmen and nesters followed and the boom was on.

Hundreds of miles from the general line of settlement, Tascosa lured the lawless and the lawmen: Billy the Kids and Pat Garretts. To accommodate those who died with their boots on in growing gunfights, a cemetery was set aside in 1879. It was named for the famed 'Boot Hill' in Dodge City, Kansas, to which Tascosa was tied by cattle and freight trail. Heaviest toll in a single shoot out occurred March 21, 1886, when three cowboys and a restaurant owner died in a five-minute duel. All went to Boot Hill.

The cattle trails, Tascosa's lifeblood, began to be pinched off with the coming of barbed wire, first commercial use of which was on the nearby Frying Pan Ranch in 1882. The noose was drawn still tighter when the vast XIT spread fenced its 3 million acres. By 1887 Tascosa was completely closed in. When the railroad bypassed it the same year, its fate was sealed.

By the time the Oldham County seat was moved to Vega in 1915, only 15 residents remained. Sole remnants of the old town today are Boot Hill and the stone courthouse. The site, however, is occupied by Cal Farley's Boys Ranch.

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Great early ranch well known to badman Billy the Kid and other famed western characters. The LS was founded in 1870's by former Indian territory trader W. M. D. Lee and New York financier Lucien Scott. Through Lee's efforts, the LS had water and grass for over 100,000 cattle and sometimes drove 6 or 7 herds a year up the trail. When thefts followed Billy the Kid's visits, LS men rode west and brought back their cattle; and when Tascosa gunfights put men into Boot Hill graves, the LS escaped disaster. But drouth brought heavy losses in 1886; and grant of 3,000,000 acres of panhandle lands to the XIT (state of Texas' payment for constructing Capitol in Austin) cut old LS range in half. Lee left in 1890 to promote a ship canal in Houston. Scott died 1893. W. H. Gray and E. F. Swift of Chicago bought LS in 1905.

Memorable LS men included foreman J. E. McAlister, later a Channing merchant. One of the $25-a-month cowboys was E. L. Doheny, later a multi-millionaire oil man involved in 1920's Teapot Dome scandal.

Ownership of brand and 96,000 acres of LS range passed to Col. C. T. Herring, rancher and civic leader of Amarillo; his estate still operates it.

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Formed from Young and Bexar Territories
Created August 21, 1876
Organized January 12, 1881
Named in honor of Williamson Simpson Oldham, 1813-1868
Arkansas lawyer and jurist, member of the Confederate Senate from Texas County seat, Tascosa, 1881
Vega, since 1915

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Founded in 1939 by Cal Farley, champion athlete and successful businessman. Boys Ranch was a natural result of Mr. Farley's years of working with underprivileged boys, and the outgrowth of Kids, Inc. and the Maverick Boys Club, two excellent youth programs in Amarillo that he helped to establish. The birth of this “Home on the Range” occurred when a prominent Panhandle rancher, Julian Bivins, gave the old courthouse and 120 acres of land on the site of the famous and historic “Wild West” town of Tascosa, making it possible to provide “a shirttail to hang to” for homeless, confused and destitute boys from all over this nation. From a humble beginning in the Old Tascosa courthouse with six boys, a cook, a superintendent and his wife, the ranch has grown to its present size and capacity because of the gifts, interest and generosity of thousands of fine people everywhere. Today there are many hundreds of “Exes” in every part of America, living successful and productive lives because of the “shirttail” they had to hang on to at Cal Farley's Boys Ranch.

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