DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Black Springs, out in Palo Pinto County. Now, before a place gets a new name, it has to earn one — and Black Springs earned plenty of history before anybody thought to change a thing. Settled before the Civil War, this little community took its name from the water source located nearby.
Water, in that part of Texas, wasn't something you took lightly. People planted themselves close to it, and they stayed. And the people who came through Black Springs — well, that's where the story gets interesting.
Among the prominent individuals associated with the town were Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight, early cattlemen and trail drivers whose names carry serious weight in the story of Texas ranching. Then there was J. J. "Jack" Cureton — a noted military veteran and pioneer.
These weren't ordinary passersby. Black Springs was pulling in the kind of figures that shaped Palo Pinto County's very growth. The community played a significant role in that growth, the marker tells us.
It was, for a time, the county's leading town. Stores, churches, a school, a railroad — Black Springs had the makings of somewhere that was going places. Then came 1886, and with it, a new name.
The community was renamed Oran — in honor of Texas Governor Oran M. Roberts. A town trading one proud identity for another.
But here's the part that settles over you quiet, like dust after the herd's moved on. The 1930s came. Then the 1940s.
And Oran — once the leading town of Palo Pinto County — declined. All those stores, those churches, that school, that railroad. The water was still there, somewhere nearby.
The history wasn't going anywhere either. But the town, well. Sometimes a place gives everything it's got, and the land just keeps on turning.
What the marker says
Settled before the Civil War and named for the area's early water source, located nearby, the Black Springs community played a significant role in the growth of Palo Pinto County. Prominent individuals associated with the town included early cattlemen and trail drivers Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight and J. J. "Jack" Cureton, a noted military veteran and pioneer. In 1886 the community was renamed Oran in honor of Texas Governor Oran M. Roberts. Once the county's leading town and the site of stores, churches, a school and railroad, it declined in the 1930s and 1940s. (1982)