DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker for Schleicher County tells this one, and I'm just the fellow passing it along. Now, out here in West Texas, towns have a way of rising up fast and disappearing just as quick — like a cold front that blows through before you even had time to button your coat. Verand is one of those towns.
The first town in all of Schleicher County, and most folks today couldn't tell you it ever existed. Around 1890, somebody looked out at the land near the headquarters of the Vermont Ranch and decided this was the place. They called it Verand, and they weren't playing small — they platted the thing out into eighty-six lots.
Eighty-six. That's not a camp, that's a town with ambitions. They put in a stagecoach station, a post office, a store, a hotel.
Twenty to thirty families built homes there. Real lives, real roots, real neighbors. And then came the trouble that has undone more than one promising place — the question of who actually owns the ground you're standing on.
The citizens of Verand found themselves unable to obtain clear title to their land. You can build all the hotels you want, but if the deed won't hold, the dream starts to wobble. Then, in 1895, a man named W.
B. Silliman — founder of a new town called Eldorado, five miles to the south — made them an offer that was hard to argue with. Free land.
Just pack up and come on down. And they did. The whole town of Verand picked up and moved five miles south.
What they left behind didn't stay a town for long. The site of Verand returned to its natural state — grass and sky and silence, like those eighty-six lots had never been drawn at all. The first town in Schleicher County, and the land just took it back.
What the marker says
The first town in Schleicher County, Verand was established about 1890 near the headquarters of the Vermont Ranch. Although short-lived, the town, platted in 86 lots, included a stagecoach station, post office, store, and hotel, as well as homes for twenty to thirty families. The citizens of Verand ultimately had difficulty obtaining clear title to their land so in 1895, in answer to an offer of free land by Eldorado founder W. B. Silliman, they moved five miles south to the new town. The site of Verand soon returned to its natural state. (1968, 1996)