McGee Ranch House

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the McGee Ranch House out in Crane County. Now, before Crane County was even a county, before there were commissioners or courthouses or any of that official business, somebody had to go first. Somebody had to look out at that raw West Texas land and say, I'm going to make something here.

R. D. McGee was that somebody.

He homesteaded this land twenty-three years before the county ever got organized. Let that settle in for a second. Twenty-three years before the county had a name on a map, McGee was already putting down roots.

Then, in 1909, he decided it was time to build proper. A real house. And not just any design, either.

He went with what's called a dog-trot style. That's a classic frontier layout, two rooms or sets of rooms with an open breezeway running right through the middle, and if you've ever stood in a West Texas summer, you understand exactly why a man would engineer a natural wind tunnel into his home. Now here's the part that'll make you appreciate every plank of that old house.

There was no lumberyard down the road. McGee had to send wagons to Odessa to haul the lumber back, and it took those wagons three days to make the trip. Three days on the trail, loaded down with the raw material of a home, before a single board got nailed into place.

That house earned every nail. The McGee family put down roots that ran deep. Jay McGee, one of R.

D.'s sons, went on to serve as one of Crane County's first commissioners when the county did finally get itself organized. The oldest house in Crane County, built by the man who was there long before the county existed, and his own son helping to shape what that county would become. Some families don't just live in a place.

They build it.

What the marker says

Crane County's oldest house; built 1909 by pioneer rancher R. D. McGee on land homesteaded 23 years prior to County organization. Jay McGee, a son, was one of the first county commissioners. Typical "dog-trot" design. It took wagons 3 days to haul the lumber from Odessa. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1966.