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PatchWork by Joyce Whitis |
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PatchWork by Joyce Whitis |
Desdemona Texas Boom Town
An old joke goes like this: when the Duke Oil Well blew in, a Desdemona citizen, an old man, an immigrant, was standing in the shadow of the wooden derrick, watching. As a fountain of black oil burst out of the ground and shot toward the sky, he began to shout, "Dere's de moe nee, Dere's de moe nee". Yes indeed back in 1918 there was money coming right out of the ground. Folks heard about it overnight and taking their worldly goods, advanced upon the unsuspecting little town. Nothing would ever be the same!
Established in 1857 by settlers who built a fort for protection from marauding bands of Indians, the settlement continued with the construction of the Rockdale Baptist Church in 1873 and in 1877 the completion of a post office. The town was named Desdemona for the daughter of a Justice of the Peace whose surname was Wynn. In 1890 the town numbered around `100 and had grown to 350 by 1900. The story goes that Hog Creek, which runs through the area around Desdemona, was named for all the wild hogs running loose, descendants of the hogs that escaped from De Sota's band of explorers who camped in the vicinity.
Hog Creek has long been a favorite swimming hole for local boys and the quiet little village is still affectionately called Hog Town. By whatever name you know it, this community, some twenty miles from Stephenville on Farm Road 8, at one time experienced an adventure akin to the Second Gold Rush, and was crammed wall to wall with a crush of humanity. Estimates say there were 20,000, 30,000, even 50,000 inhabitants, most of whom were pushing and shoving to get at that black gold which sprang from the clay soil .
Strike it rich overnight and become a millionaire! Or like some plungers who gambled and lost, rich today....broke tomorrow. Or like Sue Sanders, author of Our Common Herd, a girl who grew up poor in northern Erath County, who came to Desdemona hunting work, got a job in one of the hotels, bought into some successful wildcat ventures and became a multi-millionaire.
On Labor Day in 1918, the Hog Creek Oil Company hit a gusher on land belonging to Joe Duke. When that well blew in, it caught fire and the noise, smoke, and excitement caught the world's attention. "They said that the well caught fire and the smoke spread out over two counties," Mary Ficklin remembers her dad saying. "That, along with news of a real strike, brought in the wildcatters and others. They said that workers kept putting out the fire, only it would ignite again. Boys would dare each other to get as close to the well as possible before it would flare up again."
As news of the oil boom spread like wildfire around the country, land leases quickly shot up from $100 an acre to $10,000 and the population increased from less than 500 to perhaps 30,000 people, many of them actually homeless souls who were drawn to money and the opportunity to make a fortune.
Among those who were drawn to Desdemona were the Henslees. Enock Henslee operated a successful grocery store in Kileen but drawn by the promise of riches in the "second Gold Rush" packed up his family and moved to Desdemona in a chain-drive Ford truck. "We'd go 50 miles and pop a chain," Aaron Henslee said. He was eight years old when his family came from Kileen to Hog Town and they couldn't find a vacant house or any place to live in that suddenly crazy oil city teeming with people. Enoch Henslee erected a tent, probably one of 1,000 tents in this busy city, for his family and it was within its shelter that the mother, father, and four children spent that miserable winter of 1919.
"Our floor was dirt. We had the tent to keep out the rain but we were awful thankful when we were able to get a small apartment in the spring", Aaron Henslee said. "The streets were so muddy. There were torrential rains and lots of fires and the whole town seemed like a dangerous place. I remember that one man had a mule and a wooden sled. You could stand on the sled and the mule would pull you across the street for 50 cents. The mud in the streets was over the shoe tops so those that had the money would pay to cross. Poor folks just waded across in the mud."
The flu epidemic in 1919 wiped out a large part of the population across the nation. There were thousands who died in every small town in America. In Desdemona, Enoch Henslee, locked his children inside the house so they wouldn't be exposed to the dreaded germs. The Henslees all survived but many friends and neighbors were buried in that brown earth they had come to find riches in.
"When I was about 10 years old and my brother, Joe was about 12, we got a loan at the bank and started our own business," Henslee said. "We got enough money from the banker to put in three chairs outside the bank and at 10 cents a shine, the money just rolled in. My bother, Joe could really pop that rag, make music with his shine and the men liked that. They gave us lots of tips."
One old time resident of Desdemona told about his job as a boy. He delivered The Fort Worth Star-Telegram to customers up and down main street. "One of my regular stops was a particular apartment in one of the hotels," he said. "Everyday I would walk up the stairs and leave a paper for this customer and she always gave me a dollar or she'd say, 'I don't have a dollar today but I'll give you two tomorrow.' and she always did. She was a good customer and always paid but she never had on any clothes at all. "
There were lots of hotels in Desdemona and most of them had "girls for hire". They would sit out on the balconies in the early evening where they could be seen. There were many gambling houses where thousands of dollars lay on the tables, and places where you could get home brew. Lots of it came from the Cedar Brakes near Glen Rose or from Thurber. It has been said that some of the gambling houses with liquor were just over the line in Erath County and that the commissioners on that side of the line just looked the other way and let the parties rage on.
Sometimes the Texas Rangers had to be called out like the time that some drillers and tool dressers got mad about the price charged for their boots and they stacked the merchandise of two Jew stores out in the street. They worked all night throwing out everything, boots, pants, shirts, bolts of cloth, whatever was on the shelves, out in the mud of the street. The Texas Rangers came in the next day and got everything moved out of town.
Main Street was crowded day and night and lined with hotels, cafes, drug , grocery , and general merchandise stores. There were no open saloons but "white lightning" could be bought anywhere. Slot machines were common in most stores and there was lots of gambling with bets on the outcome of fist fights and other events. The lots on main street were narrow, mostly just 25 feet wide, so the hotels were three story buildings and they stayed full of guests. The town was bursting with energy and fist fights in the middle of the muddy street were common. "My brother, Joe, was a real fighter, mighty good with his fists and he had a hot temper so he was always gettin' into it with somebody," Henslee said. "I fought too but Joe was the one who could whip anybody in town."
Most of the teen-agers with cars filled up their empty tanks with "drip" gas, an unrefined product straight from the well. On one occasion a popular young boy was filling his tank without turning off the motor. A spark ignited the gas which made a torch out of him and his car.
There were many tragic oil field accidents. Henslee's dad, Enoch, a tank contractor, was on top of a tall storage tank that somebody had mistakenly put gas into, the night before. When Enoch started welding the seam, the huge metal tank blew sky high and he spent the next six months in a Fort Worth rehab. "He never was able to work after that, but could just hobble around some," Aaron Henslee said.
"When the bank went broke and paid 6 cents on the dollar, Dad lost all the money he had made and this was while he was still in the hospital. That was when Joe and me really went to work because it was left up to us to take care of the family. Joe quit school and I did too for a year but we were both able to finish high school at Desdemona and that was very important as I found out later. When I was looking for a job they would ask, 'What kind of education do you have?'. I would tell them that I had a high school education when in those days there were a lot of people who couldn't read and write and they would hire me on."
Henslee finished high school while finding the energy to play football and run track, although he was working three jobs in order to get by. He washed cars at the Ford House after football practice and about 9:00 that night went to work at the drug store as a "soda jerk". Sometimes he'd close up at 12 midnight and then go to his uncle's grocery store and put up the inventory. He devised the method of just cutting out the sides of the cases of canned goods and stacking them up that way because he was so tired of taking out the cans and placing them on the shelves.
The oil boom went out just as fast as it hit and by 1921 production in the wells had dropped to less than a fourth of what it was in 1918. By 1922 it was over. In 1936 the city government dissolved itself. In 1969 the school closed. In 1976 some 90 wells in the area were still in production. By 1980 the population was down to 180 with three businesses. In the late '80's the two large round storage tanks with the flying red horse emblem of Magnolia Petroleum were removed and with them went the last landmark to make folks remember the town as it once was.
The community settled down to become a small rural area populated with relatives and friends who live there by choice. Today there are few businesses open on main street but lots of history in the minds of those who remember how it was when the Duke blew in back in 1918.