Work Building

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll give it to you straight with a little Crosby County flavor. Back in 1908, the C.B. Livestock Company took a piece of that wide open N range land and laid out a whole townsite right there on it.

Just like that, a town had a reason to exist. Then two years on, in 1910, somebody looked at that raw land and said, we need something to stand in it. Something solid.

So they built this building, and here's the part worth savoring: the concrete blocks it's made from were mixed and formed right there in a dugout, one block to the east. They didn't haul materials in from somewhere fancy. They made the very bones of the building on the spot, underground, in a hole in the ground, block by careful block.

Now once those walls were up and the roof was on, the town had its first meat market under that roof. The first one. Not a temporary setup, not a tent, a real building doing real business.

And then, well, then the years started stackin' up. The building just kept going. It stayed in continuous use, right on through from 1910 forward, never shuttered, never abandoned, never gave up the ghost.

A lot of things get built in a new town and don't last. This one decided it wasn't going anywhere. Turns out, concrete blocks made in a dugout hold up just fine.

What the marker says

Using a part of -N- range land, C.B. Livestock Company laid out townsite in 1908. This building constructed in 1910 of concrete blocks made in dugout one block east. Housed town's first meat market. In continuous use ever since. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1966