DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Oldham County, there's a house made of native sandstone, and the story of how it got built is the kind of thing that sounds like someone made it up, except they didn't. The stone was hauled in from a nearby creek, and in 1886 that stone became the manager's house for the LS Ranch, owned by W.
M. D. Lee and Lucien B.
Scott. Now, the man who shaped that stone into something worth living in was a stonemason named Tom Nolan. And here's where the story gets good.
Nolan didn't pull his design from some architect's drafting table. He looked at a picture on an Arbuckle Coffee sack. A coffee sack.
He liked what he saw, because the house he built from that image, along with the twin bunkhouse facing it, still stands today. The first ranch manager to actually live in that house was a man named Jim East. If that name sounds familiar to you, it should.
Jim East had been the sheriff of Tascosa before he took up residence here. A man who'd kept order in one of the roughest towns on the Texas Panhandle, settling into a sandstone house drawn from a coffee sack. That's a particular kind of career arc.
The ranch and its headquarters changed hands over the years, and in 1939 a man named Jack Mansfield bought the property. Then in 1950 he enlarged the house, giving it a little more room to breathe. And as of the telling on this marker, the family still owns it.
Sandstone from a creek, a design from a grocery sack, and a sheriff-turned-ranch-manager under the same roof. Out here in Oldham County, that's just a Tuesday.
What the marker says
Made of native sandstone hauled from a nearby creek, this house was built in 1886 for the manager of the LS Ranch owned by W. M. D. Lee and Lucien B. Scott. Stonemason Tom Nolan designed it, and the twin bunkhouse facing it, from a picture on the Arbuckle Coffee sack. Former Tascosa Sheriff Jim East was first ranch manager to live here. In 1939 Jack Mansfield bought the property and in 1950 enlarged the house, which is still owned by the family.