First Rural School West of Pecos River

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out here west of the Pecos, in Jeff Davis County, the land doesn't give up its stories easy; but this one's worth the asking. In 1881, four settlers decided this stretch of high desert needed a school.

P. H. Pruett, Cal Nations, James Dawson, and Joe Dorsey put their backs into it and built one out of adobe brick: the first rural school west of the Pecos River.

Now, at the very same time Pruett was raising that schoolhouse, he was also building himself a home a half-mile to the north. The man wasn't one to sit idle. And he wasn't working in peaceful country, either.

There was a Texas Rangers' camp in the area, and that camp was what stood between these settlers and the Apaches who still moved through this land. That protection mattered. It mattered on ordinary days, and it mattered even more on one particular night that Mrs.

Pruett would not soon forget. She made a midnight ride (midnight, mind you, not a Sunday afternoon canter) to alert the Rangers that Apaches were approaching. You let that sit a moment.

The dark, the distance, the urgency of it. That ride is as real as the adobe bricks those men laid by hand. Then 1883 rolls around, and Pruett sells the home; not to just anybody, but to B.

H. Grierson, the Commandant of Fort Davis. And Pruett himself?

He moves four miles east and founds what he calls the Lone Cottonwood Ranch. When he moved, the school closed. The school had been his, in a way: his presence, his community, his gravity holding it open.

Come 1912, Pruett sells the Cottonwood Ranch to H. L. Kokernot.

And that land didn't fade into history; it grew. Several Kokernot ranches now use it as headquarters. An adobe schoolhouse built by four men in 1881, a midnight ride through Apache country, and a piece of ground that's still working land more than a hundred years on.

West Texas keeps what it decides to keep.

What the marker says

Built 1881 of adobe brick, by settlers P. H. Pruett, Cal Nations, James Dawson, Joe Dorsey. At the same time Pruett built home a half-mile north. A Texas Rangers' camp in area gave protection from Indians. Mrs. Pruett once made a midnight ride to alert Rangers to approach of Apaches. Pruett sold home, 1883, to Fort Davis Commandant B. H. Grierson, and founded "Lone Cottonwood" Ranch 4 miles east. School was closed after he moved. In 1912 Pruett sold "Cottonwood" to H. L. Kokernot; now several Kokernot ranches use it as headquarters. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1967