DUANE
Duane's take
The marker's the word, and I'm just the voice that carries it down the road — here's what it says about the site of Old Springer's Road Ranch, out in Hemphill County. Now, twelve and two-tenths miles east of where you're sitting, there used to be something special. First post office in all of Hemphill County, they say — and that alone would be worth noting.
But Springer's Road Ranch wasn't content to be just one thing. A. G.
Springer established the place along an 1870s trail that connected Fort Elliott, thirty-five miles to the southwest, all the way up through Fort Supply in Indian Territory and on to Fort Dodge, Kansas. That's a long stretch of hard country, and travelers on it needed somewhere to stop. Springer made sure they had one.
He ran three hundred head of cattle. He operated a stagecoach stand. He kept a tavern.
He ran a store stocked with liquor, canned goods, and hunting equipment — aimed mainly at teamsters and hunters, the kind of men who came through tired, thirsty, and needing outfitting. If you were moving along that trail, Springer's was your place. And then there was the tunnel.
A tunnel — dug right out of the dugout home-store and running all the way to the corral. Unique, the marker calls it, and I'm not inclined to argue. Not every road ranch came with an underground passage connecting the house to the horses.
What Springer had in mind when he dug it, the marker doesn't say, but a man who thought to build a thing like that was clearly thinking ahead. Speaking of thinking ahead — Springer was a poker expert. That detail's right there in the record.
He was a frequent host to soldiers who came looking for entertainment in the tavern, and you can imagine how those evenings went: cards on the table, liquor poured, men a long way from anywhere blowing off steam. Only that arrangement had a limit nobody marked on a map. In 1877, A.
G. Springer and his partner Tom Ledbetter were killed in a gun battle with angered soldiers. Both men were buried at the ranch.
The tunnel, the tavern, the post office, the poker table — all of it came to an end right there on the same ground where it had been built. Springer's Road Ranch had been the first of something and the site of something awful, and the land out there twelve-point-two miles east holds both of those things at once.
What the marker says
(12.2 mi. east) First post office in Hemphill County. Unique for tunnel from dugout home-store to corral. On 1870's trail from Ft. Elliott (35 mi. SW) to Ft. Supply, Ind. Terr., to Ft. Dodge, Kans. Established by A. G. Springer; besides running 300 head of cattle, Springer's was a stagecoach stand, tavern; store (mainly for teamster, hunters) had liquor, canned goods, hunting equipment. Poker-expert Springer was frequent host to soldiers seeking entertainment in tavern. In 1877, he and Tom Ledbetter, his partner, were killed in gun battle with angered soldiers and were buried at the ranch. (1967)