Towns of Reagan County

Stiles, Texas
Stiles dates from 1903 when Reagan County was cut from Tom Green County. John H. Reagan held a number of positions, including Treasurer of the Confederacy. He was also a Congressman and Senator and the First Railroad Commissioner when that post was created in 1891. John H. Reagan died in 1905.  The town was named after a local rancher, William G. Stiles and became the county seat when Reagan County was born. It was the only town. It had a central location and a courthouse was built in 1911 from the abundant limestone near the townsite. Big things were in store. But the railroad came to Big Lake and you can guess what happened shortly thereafter. Big Lake became the county seat in 1925. Stiles is now a ghost town, the last of the courthouse interior was set afire by an arsonist in 1999.

Big Lake, Texas
Big Lake is on State Highway 137, U.S. Highway 67, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway seven miles north of the Crockett county line in south central Reagan County. In 1905 the Coates family settled on the west side of the water-filled depression called Big Lake, a landmark holding the only fresh water between the Concho rivers and Comanche Springs at Fort Stockton. The Taylor family took up land on the east side of the water. In 1911 T. H. Taylor sold 320 acres of land to the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway of Texas for a townsite and station. The townsite, named for the lake located two miles to the south, was laid out, and a stock pen was built to hold cattle for railroad shipment. A boxcar became the depot, and a hotel with family-style dining was established. The Nairn family opened a grocery store near the tracks, and the Anderson family began a general mercantile store. W. W. Coates and A. H. Garner installed a line from Stiles, the county seat, to Big Lake to give the community telephone service. A public school was started with fifteen students in a small building that later became the Methodist parsonage. The town was ready for the arrival of the railroad. In 1912 the KCM&O built tracks from Mertzon to Girvin by way of Big Lake, and a post office was established. By fall of 1915 forty to fifty people lived in the community.

On May 28, 1923, oil was discovered in Reagan County near the town of Big Lake. That summer, oil leases sold for quick profits for local landowners and out-of-town speculators. Several new cafes, a hardware store, and a lumberyard opened to profit from the expected Big Lake boom; the hotel was expanded by a twelve-room addition; and Big Lake citizens voted to incorporate on August 15. In 1925, when a population of 100 was reported and when Big Lake appeared to be the most important town in the county, it became the county seat. The town grew to a population of 1,500 by 1927 and to 2,000 by the next year.

But the Great Depression brought the population down to 832 in 1931, when the number of businesses was reported at sixty. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s Big Lake settled into the role of a supply town for the local oil industry; the population dropped as low as 763, and the number of businesses varied between twenty-five and sixty-five. On May 23, 1951, the Spraberry Trend area was brought into production in Reagan County. Big Lake experienced another modest but sustained oil boom. Its population increased to 2,140 in 1952, to 2,600 in 1956, to 2,668 in 1961, and to 3,098 in 1966. The number of businesses during these years was about seventy-five. During the 1970s the population remained between 2,345 and 2,942, and the number of businesses bounced between fifty and seventy-eight. From 1982 to 1991 Big Lake had a population of more than 3,400 and between seventy-five and 100 businesses. In 1990 the population was 3,672. In 2000 the population dropped to 2,885.

Texon, Texas
Texon, in southwestern Reagan County eighty-five miles west of San Angelo, was named for the Texon Oil and Land Company, which drilled the Santa Rita oil well in 1923. Shortly thereafter Pittsburgh wildcatters M. L. Benedum and Joe Trees purchased some of the Texon Company's leases and formed the Big Lake Oil Company to develop the field. From 1924 to 1926 the BLOC president, Levi Smith, planned and built Texon for employees and their families south of the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway tracks. At a time when oil towns denoted wildness, Texon was considered a model oil community. In addition to houses, BLOC provided a grade school, a church, a hospital, a theater, a golf course, tennis courts, and a swimming pool for its residents, who numbered 1,200 in 1933. Smith, an avid baseball fan, sponsored the Texon Oilers, a semi professional team composed of company employees. Privately owned businesses housed in company buildings included a drug store, a cafe, a boarding house, a tailor-shop, dry-goods and grocery stores, barber and beauty shops, a service station, a dairy, an ice house, and a bowling alley. By World War II oil production was declining, and with no new wells, fewer employees were needed. By 1952 the population had fallen to 480. In 1956 Plymouth Oil Company, another Benedum-Trees property, took over BLOC, and in 1962 ownership passed to Ohio Oil, now Marathon Oil, which chose not to maintain the town of less than 100 residents. In 1986 the post office was closed, and in 1996 less than ten people lived in Texon. The population was twelve in 2000. Today Texon, is just a memory to many of the people in the area. The Santa Rita Well is still there, as is one home, deserted and abandoned near the highway. All other signs of the community have long faded away.

Best, Texas
Oil was discovered in the area in 1923. The town is reportedly named after Tom Best, an English stockholder of the Orient Railroad, which established a railroad switching station in the town in 1924. The town rapidly grew reaching a population of 3,500 by 1925.  The rapid growth of the town was accompanied by a wild reputation, which was portrayed in the Clyde Ragsdale novel, The Big Fist. A commonly used slogan was coined that “the town with the Best name in the world and worst reputation."  The population of the town declined after 1925 where it was 300 by 1945. The population in 1990 was 25. Today it is unpopulated and merely known by a sign still standing on the highway.

 

submitted by Janice Rice

 

Back to the Main Index Page