Van Horn, TX

Every town we stop at and take the time to look around and see what they have to offer has some very interesting things to share. We went to the Clark Hotel which has been converted into the local museum and got to visit with Robert Stucky who took us around and told us of the history of the area.

The above picture was taken in 1919 during the Old Setllers Reunion and Barbeque which brought people (even the Govenor) from around the state to participate. The Clark Hotel is seen in this picture and is the two story building. The upper floor was built to act as the original court house until they built a dedicated building a couple of years later. This view was taken from the main drag between the buildings and the railroad tracks. Later when the highway was built, they ran it through what had been the alley behind the buildings which caused all of the business to redirect their focus towards the opposite direction!

Here is a photo above of Robert taken at the bar in the Clark Hotel. Robert gave us a feel for how this part of the state developed. Texas, since it came into the Union as a republic, never had federal land. The state sold land to private people to expand the civilization. They had tried to sell this land for 50 cents per acre and had no luck. They decided in about 1906 that they would open it up for homesteading to get rid of it and get it on the tax rolls. Instead of the federal size of 160 acres which is one quarter of an section, they allowed each homesteader to have 8 full sections of land each.

You can imagine the problems this caused! The local ranchers were using the land as open range and now would find themselves limited to the 8 sections they could homestead. Not to be stymied by this, many ranchers hired a lot of cowboys who then applied for their 8 sections which later found thier way to the ranchers hands. The ranchers also had to deal with those folks who would come in thinking that they could get a homestead. Most of those were convinced by one means or another that their health would be much improved if they turn over their homesteads to the ranchers and leave the area. There, of course, were some hardheaded ones that had to be made examples of and their bones were found later on out in the sagebrush!

Above is an exibit from the museum. It is of two lard buckets that were found by a border patrolman about 20 years ago north of town in the mountains where there are some silver mines. Inside of the buckets were the possessions of a Mexican. The material in the buckets indicated that they date from early 1897 and there was a letter that he had written but never sent so they have his name but are not aware of what happened to him.
This is a translation of the letter and you can see his name was Felipe Frais. Amazing that this was found after being out in the mountains for 100 years unmolested.