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Vernon, the county's seat of government and largest city, is thirty-five miles northwest of Wichita Falls.The area that is now Wilbarger County was part of the buffalo hunting ground of the Wanderers Band of Comanches until the 1870s, when great buffalo hunts by whites destroyed the herds and United States Army campaigns removed the Indians. Wilbarger County was established in 1858 from lands formerly assigned to the Bexar District. It was named for settlers Josiah P. and Mathias Wilbarger. Though the area was within the boundary of the Peters colony, because of Indian hostilities it attracted no settlers until 1878, when the first settlement was made and the county was attached to Clay County for judicial purposes. C. F. and J. Doan, the first settlers in the area, established Doan's Crossing and Store where the Western Trail crossed the Red River; C. F. Doan became the county's first postmaster in 1880 after buffalo hunters, cattlemen, and Indians settled near the store, and mail lines to Wichita Falls, Mobeetie, and Seymour were soon opened. Mrs. A. T. Boger held classes for schoolchildren in a dugout east of Vernon in 1879, and by the next year a school had been built; L. N. Perkins taught the first classes there. W. B. Worsham established the R2 Ranch with headquarters at Big Spring in 1879. Settlers who lacked livestock made a living poisoning coyotes for their hides; gathering buffalo bones for eastern fertilizer plants was another source of income. Bone gatherers hauled their take to Gainesville, where bones sold for twenty to twenty-two dollars per ton. |
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