Site of First Ward County Courthouse

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, picture this: Ward County, West Texas, and a brand new courthouse rising three stories into the desert sky. Red sandstone, mind you.

A domed cupola sitting up top like a crown. Somebody meant business when they built that building in 1893, just one year after Barstow had been elected the first Ward County seat. One year.

They weren't wasting any time. You earn that county seat, you build something worthy of it. And worthy it was.

Three stories of red sandstone with a dome on top, right here on this very spot. Now, a courthouse like that needs officials to fill it, and Ward County had a full roster ready to go. R.

D. Gage stepped in as county judge. S.

D. McWhorter handled duties as county and district clerk. W.

M. Ware took on the combined role of sheriff and tax collector, which tells you something about the economy of the frontier, doubling up like that. John W.

Phillips served as county attorney. S. H.

Parker was tax assessor. J. B.

Carson came in as surveyor. J. J.

Walker held the treasurer's post. And then there were the commissioners: Pat Wheat at number one, W. C.

Carson at number two, Pat Duracke at number three, and A. D. Irvin rounding it out at number four.

Quite a crew walking the halls of that red sandstone building with the dome up top. Now, here's where the story takes its turn, and it is a quiet kind of tragedy, the kind the West Texas landscape seems to swallow without much fuss. The county seat moved.

In 1938, Ward County shifted its center of gravity to Monahans. And soon after that move, that three-story courthouse, the one with the domed cupola, the one built from red sandstone in 1893, was razed. Gone.

All that grand ambition, all those names on the rolls of first elected officials, reduced to one thing: a cornerstone. Just a cornerstone. That's what's left.

Sometimes the most permanent thing about a place is the smallest piece of it.

What the marker says

A Three-story red sandstone courthouse with a domed cupola was constructed here in 1893, one year after Barstow was elected first Ward County seat. The first elected officials to serve in the courthouse were R. D. Gage, co. judge; S. D. McWhorter, co. & dist. clerk; W. M. Ware, sheriff & tax collector; John W. Phillips, co. attorney; S. H. Parker, tax assessor; J. B. Carson, surveyor; J. J. Walker, treas.; Pat Wheat, Comm. No. 1; W. C. Carson, Comm. No. 2; Pat Duracke, Comm. No. 3; and A. D. Irvin, Comm. No. 4. The landmark was razed soon after the county seat moved to Monahans in 1938. All that remains is a cornerstone.