Cabeza

Duane's take

The way I tell it, I'm followin' the official marker for Cabeza, right here in DeWitt County, so let's see what it has to say. Now Cabeza Creek runs through this part of Texas quiet as you please, and back in the 1870s a man named Joshua Butler came all the way from Virginia and set down roots on two thousand acres along that creek. Two thousand acres.

That's not a farm, folks, that's an ambition. And ambition, it turns out, is contagious. Soon enough John Riley and a fellow by the name of P.

P. Short were standing up large sheep and cattle ranches of their own out here. When you start adding up names like that, you know a community is taking shape.

Now the children of those ranching families, they needed schooling. So for a while they made the journey to Yorktown and Helena. Those are real towns with real schoolhouses, and if you've ever tried to get a child ready before sunrise for a long ride, you understand why it wasn't long before somebody decided a local schoolhouse was a fine idea.

That schoolhouse went up on Short's land. On P. P.

Short's land, to be precise, and the kids of Cabeza finally had somewhere close to hang their hats and open their books. A public school came along after that, and it did double duty, serving as a place of worship for both Baptist and Methodist congregations. One building, two denominations, probably a whole lot of negotiating about who got which Sunday.

By 1889 Cabeza had itself a post office. And once a place has a post office, well, it's official. The village filled in around it: a doctor's office, mercantile stores, a cotton gin, a blacksmith shop.

The kind of collection that tells you people were staying, working, building a life out here on the creek. But 1907 came around, and the post office closed. That's often the first quiet sign that a place is changing its mind about itself.

By the 1950s the area schools had consolidated, and the big ranches that Joshua Butler and John Riley and P. P. Short had carved out of this land gave way to smaller farms spread across the same ground.

Cabeza didn't vanish. It just got quieter. The creek's still there, rolling along like it always did, not especially impressed with any of it.

What the marker says

In the 1870s Joshua Butler from Virginia settled here on 2000 acres along Cabeza Creek. Soon John Riley and P. P. Short began large sheep and cattle ranches. Their children attended schools in Yorktown and Helena until a schoolhouse was built on Short's land. Later a public school opened here and served for Baptist and Methodist worship. A post office was begun in 1889. The village had a doctor's office, mercantile stores, cotton gin, and blacksmith shop. The post office closed in 1907. By the 1950s area schools consolidated and small farms replaced the large ranches.