West of the Colorado

“West of the Pecos” are four words that used to be synonymous with “wild and wooly.”

But from the 1820s to the mid 1870s, “West of the Colorado” would have been an equally suitable phrase for describing unsettled Texas.

The Colorado and its tributaries were the line of demarcation between settled and wild Texas for at least a decade after the Civil War. Even into 1880-81, before the Texas and Pacific Railroad finally made it across West Texas, “West of the Colorado” meant way out there.

Crime was a particular problem, especially state coach robbing.

Alex Sweet, a Texas newspaper writer with a fine sense of humor, once described a stage coach holdup west of the Colorado where “we had just come to the San Saba [River] bottom.”

Telling the story in the third person to a doctor he never named, Sweet referred to himself as “the reporter.”

The reporter sat as one of four passengers in a stage coach traveling on a day so cold that the side curtains of the coach were all buttoned. When the stage came to a sudden halt, one of the passengers, not being able to see out, asked the driver if they had come to a stage stand.

“No,” the driver reported, “this is a six-shooter post office.”

Two pistol packing robbers then relieved the passengers of all valuables they had not been able to hide, but no one suffered any harm other than financially.

“The reporter,” Sweet went on, “concluded by saying that this was the only stage-robbing experience he had ever had. The driver looked earnestly at the doctor, and winked at all that part of the state west of the Colorado river.”

Stage robbery had grown so common “West of the Colorado,” Sweet continued, that “the traveling public became so accustomed to going through the usual ceremonies that they complained to the stage company if they came through unmolested. Being robbed came to be regarded as a vested right.”

By the late 1880s, railroads had eliminated most stage coach routes in Texas. Not to be outdone by changing times, outlaws took to robbing trains.

Why’d They Name it That?

So how did the Fannin County community of Telephone come to be named for an instrument of electronic communication? The telephone, as we know, came into being in 1876 thanks to the work of Alexander Graham Bell. And only a decade later, general store proprietor Pete Hindman applied to the government for a post office to serve the small community then developing 12 miles from the county seat of Bonham.

Postal bureaucrats didn’t cotton to the various town names he submitted. Since Hindman had the only telephone in the area at his store, it occurred to him that Telephone might make it past the pencil pushers in D.C. And, to his surprise and satisfaction, the U.S. Post Office Department formally established Telephone, Texas as a mail destination.

Unlike many small Texas communities, with 210 residents, Telephone still has a post office, zip code 75488.

Sayin’ it the Texas Way

Poverty: “They are so poor they couldn’t buy a jaybird a wrestling suit.”

Lone Star Levity

Back in the one-room school days, and at the depth of the so-called Great Depression, an East Texas teacher hoped to impress on her students the practical value of math.

“Johnny,” she asked, “if you had $14.52 in one pocket and $15.48 in the other pocket, what would you have?”

The youngster studied on the matter for a moment before answering.

“I’d have somebody else’s pants on,” he said.

Stories in Numbers

With the dedication in November 2016 of the Texas African American History Memorial, the Capitol grounds now has 21 monuments. The latest piece of public art is 27 feet high and 32 feet wide. Ed Dwight, a sculptor from Denver, created the bronze and granite work.