Gunfights & Sites in Texas Ranger History

by Mike Cox

  Back in Alpine, a doctor wanted to amputate Cook’s leg, but the lawman refused. However, he did have the doctor break the leg and set it with somewhat of a bend so he could still sit a horse. The former ranger lived with pain until July 21, 1918, when he died during surgery after finally consenting to the leg’s amputation.

  Considered a harbinger of doom for anyone who saw it, the lonely animal branded M-U-R-D-E-R roamed the county for years before its owner finally sold it.

  Visit: The shooting occurred on the Leoncita Ranch located north of Alpine, privately owned.

  SUL ROSS STATE UNIVERSITY

  Founded as Sul Ross Normal School for Teachers in 1917 and opened three years later, the university is named for Texas Ranger Lawrence Sullivan “Sul” Ross, who led the company that recovered Comanche captive Cynthia Ann Parker in 1860. Ross later served as governor from 1887 to 1891 and as president of Texas A&M University from 1891 to 1898. A historical marker on the Administration Building outlines Ross’s background, including his Ranger service. A six-foot bronze statue of former ranger Ross by New Braunfels sculptor Paul Tadlock was unveiled on the campus in 2014. Retired Fort Worth educator and businessman Charlie Nichols, a 1959 Sul Ross graduate, donated $100,000 for the piece of public art.

  FATHER OF BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK

  Born in Colorado County in 1871, Everett Ewing Townsend served in the Rangers from 1891 to 1893 and again from 1898 to 1900. While his record as a state lawman would be unblemished, he lied about his age to join the Rangers, claiming to be twenty-one when he was only twenty. Between Ranger stints, he worked in the Big Bend area first as a deputy U.S. marshal under former ranger Dick Ware and later as a mounted U.S. Customs inspector.

  Moving from Presidio to Alpine in 1916, he bought a twelve-thousand-acre ranch and built a home in town. Two years later, he became sheriff of sprawling Brewster County—the nation’s largest county—holding office until 1926.

  Based in Presidio during his time as a federal officer, Townsend became enthralled with the rugged mountains and canyons along the big bend of the Rio Grande. Elected as a state representative in 1932, as a member of the legislature, and later as a private citizen, he played an important role in developing Big Bend National Park.

  Living long enough to see the formal opening of the huge national park in 1944, Townsend died on November 19, 1948.

  Visit: Elm Grove Cemetery, TW Ranch and Cemetery Road. Museum of the Big Bend, Sul Ross University, U.S. Highway 90.

  BROWN COUNTY

  Brownwood

  FENCE CUTTER WAR

  Ill will between those who fenced their land with barbed wire and those still partial to the old open range days ran particularly strong in Brown County. What came to be called the Fence Cutter War only claimed two lives in the county, but twice, local lawmen and rangers barely prevented gunfights that likely would have killed many more.

  When violence did erupt in the county on November 8, 1886, rangers under Captain William Scott killed a couple fence cutters in a nighttime gunfight on L.P. Baugh’s ranch north of Brownwood. One close call came the next day outside the courthouse when a sheriff’s deputy, believed to be a fence-cutter, confronted a deputized ranger informant as he walked with a ranger. The county lawman demanded the man’s pistol, an order the ranger took exception to, drawing his weapon on the deputy. Sheriff W.N. Adams saw what was happening, ran up and threw down on the ranger. Fortunately, Captain Scott walked up and smooth-talked everyone into holstering their hardware.

  The other close call had happened earlier, when Sheriff Adams succeeded in calming a potential mob that descended on the courthouse following a mass meeting of those opposed to fences.

  Visit: A historical marker on the Fence Cutter War stands outside the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco. Another marker dealing with the conflict is on the Coke County courthouse square at Seventh Street and Austin Avenue in Robert Lee. The Brown County shootout occurred on Baugh’s ranch in an area covered by Lake Brownwood in 1933. Technically, the 1884-vintage courthouse where Sheriff Adams reasoned with both factions still stands, but it was so extensively remodeled in 1917 that it is essentially a different building. A two-story stone building constructed in 1876 at Brownwood and Center Streets was owned by Moses and Sam Coggin, ranchers and businessmen who figured in the fence-cutting imbroglio. The fence cutter faction met in the opera house on the building’s second floor before marching across the street to the courthouse for their meeting with Sheriff Adams.

  C.M. GRADY (1854–1949)

  Caleb Grady, an Indian-fighting ranger who lived to see the atomic age, played a significant role in developing the Ex-Ranger Association Park at Santa Anna. Born in Kentucky, he came with his family to Texas in 1872. Following his Ranger service, he took up farming in Coleman County near Santa Anna and stayed there most of his life. His daughter, Mrs. R.C. Gay, helped him get his colorful recollections into print with his book, Into the Setting Sun. Grady died at ninety-five on June 29, 1949 in Brownwood.

  Look! Can’t you see them—the Rangers! There go the boys.

  –Grady to his daughter, shortly before he died

  Visit: Greenleaf Cemetery, 2701 U.S. 377 South. Public Ground West Addition. Built in 1902, the four-story, castle-like old Brown County Jail at 212 North Broadway Street houses a firearms museum. Across from the jail at 209 North Broadway is the Brown County Museum of History.

  COLEMAN COUNTY

  Coleman

  COLONEL JAMES E. MCCORD (1834–1914)

  Judging by some early histories, the Rangers disappeared for several years in the 1860s, not reconstituted until the creation of the Frontier Battalion in 1874. But the Rangers were around during the Civil War, filling the void left when the U.S. Army marched away at the beginning of the conflict. Confederate Indian fighters were not always called rangers, but that had been the case since the early 1820s.

  One important Ranger figure during the sectional war was James McCord, who came to Texas from South Carolina in 1847. After its creation in 1856, he helped survey Coleman County. Three years later, he rode with ranger lieutenant Edward Burleson, scouting the area he had covered with tripod and transit. As colonel in charge of the state’s frontier defenders during the latter part of the war, McCord maintained his headquarters at Camp Colorado, twelve miles from Coleman.

  Even though the county had been created twenty years earlier, it was not organized until 1876. When that happened, McCord came back and stayed. He was president of Coleman National Bank when he died in 1914.

  Visit: A historical marker commemorating McCord’s life stands in the Coleman City Park on State Highway 206. The park features a 1936 replica of the Camp Colorado headquarters. McCord lies in the Coleman City Cemetery, East Ninth and Comal Streets. Heritage Hall and Coleman Museum, 400 West College Avenue.

  Santa Anna

  As mountains go, Santa Anna Peak isn’t much of one, rising only three hundred feet above the surrounding terrain. But in comparison with the generally flat landscape in every direction around it, the feature has been a landmark for as long as people have been in the area.

  Caleb Grady first saw the peak as a buffalo hunter in 1875. Later that year, when he joined the Rangers under crusty Captain Jeff Maltby, Grady and his fellow rangers had their camp on a creek four miles from the mountain. He and other rangers spent a lot of time on the peak keeping an eye out for Indians. In time, the rangers rode on, but as old men, many of them would be back.

  When the Ex–Texas Rangers Association began holding annual reunions in the 1920s, Grady seldom missed one. In 1935, the association met at Santa Anna. About the same time, the organization’s leadership decided to adopt a regular meeting place. Given that many of the old rangers once served in the vicinity, they picked Santa Anna.

  With help from local donors, the association bought twenty-five acres on the slope of the peak to serve as a reunion ground. Grady helped secure federal Works Progress Administration money for construction of a rustic, native st
one meeting hall with a fireplace on each end. The work began in 1936, and the association held its first reunion there in 1937. From then, the rangers came back to their old stomping grounds every summer until 1951, when only one aged ex-ranger attended.

  Texas Ranger Motel in Santa Anna includes reunion grounds of Indian-fighting Rangers. Photo by Mike Cox.

  The local Veterans of Foreign Wars post took over the property after the reunions ended. Later, the property went to the Texas Highway Department and continued in use as a park. The state, in turn, deeded the acreage to the City of Santa Anna. In 1979, then Sheriff H.F. Fenton purchased the old meeting hall and built a ten-unit motel adjacent to it. He didn’t have any trouble coming up with a name for it—the Texas Ranger Motel.

  In January 2015, Bill and Nancy Massey of Odessa purchased the motel, the Depression-era meeting hall and slightly more than five acres around it. They extensively remodeled the motel and the historic meeting hall and hope to acquire other portions of the original park.

  Visit: The Texas Ranger Motel and RV Park is at 401 U.S. 84 just east of Santa Anna. Visitors are welcome to take a look at the historic reunion hall. Rangers standing sentinel on Santa Anna Peak in the 1870s carved their names on two large rocks now sitting in front of the structure.

  JOHN R. BANISTER (1854–1918)

  Banister and brother William ran away from home in Missouri and came to Texas in 1867. After cowboying for a time, John joined the Rangers on October 9, 1877, with his brother following suit six weeks later. After leaving the Rangers in 1880, John Banister held a railroad job for a while, worked as an inspector for the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association and then became sheriff of Coleman County in 1914. When he died on August 1, 1918, county commissioners appointed his widow to fill the last three months of his term. That made Emma Daugherty Banister the first female sheriff in U.S. history. She lived until 1956 and is buried next to her husband.

  Visit: Santa Anna Cemetery. From junction of Farm to Market Road 2294 and Farm to Market Road 755, go north 6.4 miles on Farm to Market Road 755. Turn right on Saenz Lane and drive east 0.2 miles to an unnamed dirt road. Turn north and take road to cemetery. While sheriff, Banister lived in the 1890-vintage Coleman County Jail, still in use in Coleman. Historical exhibits, Santa Anna Visitors’ Center, 704 Wallis Avenue.

  The old Coleman County Jail, once home to former ranger John Banister and his family, remains in use. Photo by Mike Cox.

  COMANCHE COUNTY

  Comanche

  CLOSE DOESN’T COUNT IN GUNFIGHTS

  On the night of May 26, 1874, outside a saloon in Comanche, a former ranger cleared leather and snapped off a round at John Wesley Hardin.

  Unfortunately, he missed. Actually, the hastily dispatched .45 slug did graze Hardin’s shoulder, but close only counts in horseshoes. Hardin did not miss. Charles Webb, a sheriff’s deputy from nearby Brown County, dropped to the street with a bullet in his head.

  The following day, rangers under Captain John R. Waller arrived in Comanche, and on May 30, the captain and five of his men flushed Hardin and his friend Jim Taylor out in the sticks. Following an exchange of gunfire, the pair escaped.

  On June 1, a delegation of Comanche County residents removed Hardin’s brother Joe and two Hardin cousins from jail and hanged them. Captain Waller, still hunting Wes Hardin, did not even consider the matter worthy of inclusion in his report to headquarters.

  Three years passed before the Rangers caught up with Wes Hardin again.

  Historical marker near the Brownwood grave of former ranger Charles Webb, gunned down by notorious shootist John Wesley Hardin in 1874. Photo by Mike Cox.

  There is a great deal more danger from [Hardin and Taylor] than from the Indians.

  –Captain Waller to headquarters

  Visit: Former ranger Webb (1848–1874) died near the east door of Jack Wright’s Saloon, northeast corner of West Grand and North Page Streets. A nearby historical marker details the shooting that put the Rangers on Hardin’s trail. A 2012 historical marker stands near Webb’s grave in Greenleaf Cemetery, Masonic Addition, Brownwood. Comanche County Historical Museum, 402 Moorman Road.

  CROCKETT COUNTY

  HOWARD’S WELL

  One of the most important water holes in arid West Texas was Howard’s Well in present Crockett County. Likely first used by Spanish explorers, former ranger Richard A. Howard rediscovered the water hole in 1848, and from then on, it bore his name. Howard had been part of an expedition led by Captain John Coffee Hays (a surveyor before he took up rangering) to map a wagon road from San Antonio to El Paso. The water source Howard found succeeded in temporarily abating the expedition’s shortage of water, but the men and their Delaware Indian scouts eventually had to give up and return to San Antonio. A year later, Howard guided a U.S. military expedition along the same route, stopping at the well. After that, California-bound ’49ers, stagecoaches along the Overland Mail Route, rangers and other travelers always stopped at the well.

  Indians, of course, had known about the water source for years and continued to use it. In 1872, a band of Comanches attacked a wagon train near the well and massacred sixteen people.

  Visit: The well site (the spring has been dry for years) is on private property, but its story is told on a historic marker at Fort Lancaster State Historic Site, thirty-six miles west of Ozona off U.S. 290. Crockett County Museum, 407 Eleventh Street, Ozona.

  CULBERSON COUNTY

  Van Horn

  CAPTAIN BAYLOR’S BREAKFAST

  Captain George Baylor and his rangers had been on the Apaches’ trail nearly two weeks.

  The hunt began when rangers investigating the late arrival of the stagecoach at Fort Quitman found that Indians had attacked it in Quitman Canyon in present Hudspeth County. When the rangers rode up on the wreckage of the stage, they expected to find the bodies of its driver and passengers, but they were missing, along with all but one of the mules that had been pulling the coach. That animal lay dead. Determined to catch up with the Indians and their presumed captives, the rangers followed the warriors’ tracks into Mexico and back into Texas.

  From the Rio Grande, the trail headed north into the Eagle Mountains, thirty-plus miles above present Van Horn. The sign had grown increasingly fresh.

  On the evening of January 28, 1881, Baylor noticed doves flying toward what he knew must be a water source in the mountains, which would be a logical place for the Apaches to be camped.

  The next morning, the Rangers’ Pueblo scouts found the Indians, and the lawmen attacked them as they cooked their breakfast. Killing four warriors, two women and two children, the rangers captured several others. Some of the rangers did not like having killed women and children, but it was done. As it turned out, the attack marked the last fight Rangers ever had with Indians.

  After the shooting ended, Baylor and his men sat down to eat the breakfast the Indians had been preparing. Once full, the rangers took the prisoners to Fort Davis. The stagecoach occupants were never found.

  Some of the men found horse meat pretty good, while others found venison and roasted weasel good enough.

  –Captain Baylor, Into the Far, Wild Country: True Tales of the

  Old Southwest

  Visit: The battle occurred in the Sierra Diablo Mountains on what is now the Figure 2 Ranch. A historical marker telling the story of the fight and giving a history of the ranch is located thirty-two miles north of Van Horn on State Highway 54. Culberson County Historic Museum, 112 West Broadway Street, Van Horn.

  EL PASO COUNTY

  El Paso

  “Hell Paso” as some sarcastically called it, was a tough town. Starting with the bloody Salt War of 1877, during the nineteenth century, more rangers or former rangers died in the line of duty in and around El Paso than any other place in Texas.

  SALT WAR

  Rangers sometimes got caught up in other people’s fights. That’s what happened in the Salt War, a legal dispute over salt deposits that turned violent. Rac
ial and religious differences, politics and weak local law enforcement added seasoning to a deadly stew that would claim the lives of two rangers.

  The conflict arose over access to salt flats seventy miles east of El Paso, an area where people from both sides of the Rio Grande had been helping themselves to salt for generations. When El Pasoan Charles Howard gained control of the flats and began charging a fee to collect the all-important mineral, the town’s Hispanic population—by far the majority—grew incensed.

  But not everyone opposed to Howard’s claim was a Mexican American or Mexican citizen. Louis Cardis, a Spanish-speaking Italian immigrant who represented the El Paso area in the legislature, did not like what Howard had done and liked it even less when Howard had two Mexicans charged with trespass over the salt issue. The friction boiled over on October 10, when Howard blew the lawmaker away with a double-barreled shotgun.

  A plea for help resulted in Major John B. Jones coming to El Paso for a firsthand assessment. Agreeing the situation had become volatile, the major raised a twenty-man ranger company under Lieutenant John Tays. Satisfied Tays and his men would keep things quiet, Jones departed.

  No matter the presence of the new ranger company, the bloodshed Jones hoped to forestall came anyway. At San Elizario on December 12, an armed mob surrounded the adobe structure Tays and six members of his company had taken shelter in to protect Howard. After a three-day siege, in which Ranger Conrad E. Mortimer was killed and Sergeant John E. McBride wounded, Howard agreed to give up, and Tays surrendered. But despite their leader’s assurances, the anti-Howard faction executed Howard, along with ally John G. Atkinson and Sergeant McBride, whom the mob viewed as more Howard partisan than lawman. The other rangers were disarmed and released.