28 Mar 2020 Coronavirus note
Dear Readers, the United States is undergoing an almost unique medical and leadership crisis. Over a century ago, we endured another pandemic, the flu. Read The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry to see how the world coped with the 1918-1919 influenza outbreak. This may have killed over 50 million people, many of whom were in India, where the total number of deaths will never be known.I wrote these Texas articles several months ago. I will keep posting them with the hope that they help take your minds, if only temporarily, off the virus news. Conditions will get better.
Heading west in the Panhandle
Heading northwest out of Wichita Falls, you enter the big prairie country, with seemingly endless farms and lonely country farm roads. US 287 does pass through an occasional town, most of which, I assume, were built during the railroad era of the late-1800s.
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| Big farm country, Chillicothe, Texas (Moto G5 digital image) |
In the next article, the journey west continues!
3 comments:
Nice results from taking the time to stop and really look at these small towns. I especially like the tones and textures in the old house shot.
No luck on the buildings original purpose, but a few Chilicothe tidbits include and 1891 flood that saw 10 feet waters rush through town, drowning 4 men and destroying wheat; 1893, Chilicothe shipped 80 cars of wheat in the second week of June; 1899, the Chilicothe Grain Co. forfeited its charter for failure to pay the Franchise Tax; 1906, the Telephone Company was established; 1908, the railroad tracks were extended north from Crowell into Chilicothe, and only 17 more miles of track were needed to complete the line from Sweetwater to Kansas; and in 1918, the bank was closed due to insolvency resulting from the drought. It sounds like Chilicothe has had its share of hard times.
I looked on some old Sanborn maps of 1921 and they show those two old storefronts as a hardware store (the south one)and a grocery. The map shows business buildings lining the street on both sides for the entire block. These two are pretty much what remains.
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