Pages 011 to 014
Period I – 1858 to 1873Chapter 1,
The New County
In 1858, before a white man had ventured to expose
himself and family to the dangers of what was then an Indian
infested frontier, Eastland County was created by an act of the
Seventh Legislature of Texas. By the same act Callahan, Stephens,
Concho, Wichita, Coleman, Dawson, Shackelford, McMullin, Frio,
Zavalla, Edwards, Haskell, Knox, Hardeman, Dimmit, Baylor, Runnels,
Jones, Wilbarger, LaSalle, Duval, Taylor and Encinal Counties came
into existence. The bill was approved February 1, 1858.
The County was named for Captain William Eastland, who died a
prisoner in Mexico. He is thought to have been one of the Muir
prisoners, though Bean, in his memoirs in Yoakum’s History of Texas,
does not give his name.
Eastland County is ideally located, containing within its limits the
divide between the Leon River and Palo Pinto Creek, and the eastern
extremity of the backbone of the Colorado and Brazos Rivers. The
depression between these two divides is cut into by Colony Creek, a
tributary of the Leon River.
The northern slope of the eastern divide is drained by the two forks
of Palo Pinto Creek, while the rest of the County is watered by the
Leon, which rises just beyond the County’s western limit, and makes
its exit about three miles southwest of Desdemona.
The eastern divide is characterize by high hills of numerous shapes,
which lie, in the main, ease and west. It is gashed with ragged
ravines, and abounds in deep canyons, in confused and tilted rocks,
producing a varied and picturesque scenery.
This broken ride of high lands bends northward above the first
impressions of Colony Creek, and dips again southward around Cisco,
the tongues of the Brazos licking into the northern slope of the
backbone, playing hide and seek with the forages of Leon and
Colorado on the south. As the great skeleton begins to spread itself
westward, it leaves large canyons and gulches.
Trees of many kinds grow in great profusion – cedar and live oak on
the hills; post oak and blackjack on the sandy uplands; pecan and
walnut, elm and hackberry, cottonwood and willow along the streams,
and in the glades mesquite abounds, and in many sandy locations the
shinery. (*Some call a thick young growth of oak, shinery; others
affirm it is a peculiar, stunted growth of oak. The latter opinion
is, perhaps, correct.)
When the County was created its soil lay bare, void of fence or
shack in its rugged nakedness. Under its huge boulders the wild cat
found a safe home; its numerous caves afforded the wolves a hiding
place; the bear, the panther, and the cougar roamed wild and free
over its mountains, while the Indian, in his savage wildness, did
not need to seek even the protection of a friendly canyon, so free
was Eastland County from the tread of the white man. |
