Tascosa

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it — and Tascosa's story is worth every word. Somewhere out in Oldham County, the Texas Panhandle stretches wide and flat and lonesome, and right in the middle of all that open country, there was once a place that called itself the cowboy capital of the Texas Panhandle. Tascosa.

Say it slow. It's got weight to it. And from 1877 to 1888, it earned every ounce of that weight.

Cowboys rode in from ranches spread across that vast country, and they brought their noise and their trouble and their coin right along with them. Even Billy the Kid found his way to Tascosa, adding — as the marker puts it — to its liveliness. Now that's one way to put it.

The name itself has a story behind it. Tascosa is a corruption of Atascoso — that's a Spanish word meaning boggy — first given to a nearby creek. The name traveled, the way names do out here, and it landed on a town that was anything but boggy.

It was dry and dusty and absolutely alive. Wild west fiction made Tascosa famous beyond its own borders, which is saying something for a town that was also doing serious civic work. From 1881 to 1915, Tascosa served as the county seat of Oldham County.

That's official business, right alongside all the wildness. But here's the thing about boomtowns — they rise fast and they quiet down just as fast. By the time 1915 came around and the county seat moved on, Tascosa had already started fading back into the Panhandle dust.

The State of Texas erected this marker in 1936, making sure that cowboy capital didn't just disappear without somebody writing it down.

What the marker says

Cowboy capital of the Texas Panhandle, 1877-1888. "Billy the Kid" and cowboys from many ranches added to its liveliness. Made famous by wild west fiction. Its name is a corruption of Atascoso (boggy) first given to nearby creek. County seat of Oldham County, 1881-1915. Erected by the State of Texas 1936