DUANE
Duane's take
Here's what the marker has to say, and I'm just gonna tell it straight — well, straight as I can. Now, out here in Hemphill County, there's a spot that carries one of the most honest names in the history of Texas real estate. Hogtown.
Not a name somebody dreamed up to sound grand. Not a name to put on a welcome sign and feel good about. No — Hogtown got its name because the place looked like a hogpen, and apparently nobody in 1886 felt the need to argue otherwise.
Here's how it happened. The Southern Kansas railroad line came pushin' through this country, and wherever the railroad went, people followed — or rather, the people building the railroad went first, and civilization stumbled along behind 'em. That year, 1886, a tent city sprang up right here.
Just canvas and dust and a railroad gang with work to do. No permanence intended, no founding fathers makin' speeches. Just tents, just labor, just that sprawling, chaotic look that apparently called to mind one thing and one thing only — a hogpen.
And so: Hogtown. Now, a tent city lives and dies by where the tracks go. And that's where things got interesting.
The landowner here was a man named Sam Pollard, and Sam Pollard and the railroad had themselves a disagreement. A dispute over the price of the land. Now the marker doesn't take sides, and neither will I — but somebody blinked, or nobody did, because the two parties never came to terms.
So the railroad did what railroads do when they don't get what they want. They moved the line. Picked it up, carried it across the river.
And when the line moved, the populace moved with it. Every last soul, just... gone across the river, following those tracks the way people in that era followed tracks because the tracks were everything — commerce, connection, the whole future. What rose up on the other side of that river became the town of Canadian.
Hogtown was its forerunner — the raw, ragged, honest-named thing that had to exist before the real town could. Sam Pollard held his price, the railroad held its route, and Hogtown held nothing at all. Some negotiations end in a handshake.
Some end in a ghost.
What the marker says
Forerunner of town of Canadian. Sprang up, 1886, as a tent city for railroad gang working on Southern Kansas line. Named for poor appearance-- like a hogpen. After landowner Sam Pollard and railroad disputed price for land, line moved across river, taking populace with it. (1969)