Weatherford High School - Eagle Yearbook (Weatherford, OK)

Page 10 text:

State Bcchange Bank, now the Eaton Drug Corner. BEER DEPOT! If you can read the slgn on the front of this building you can see that the Anheuser Busch Beer company got here early. Standing near what is now the armory, this saloon was one of the many which appeared on Broadway soon after the town began. The house is the Carl Stettler residence. ivfqg if I' developed, came along this trail to stop at the Weatherford home for refreshments . She also remembers a cloudburst which occurred on May 5, 1892--washing away many of their belongings . Weatherford had four pretty daughters and his place was the social center of the region, where roughly clad homesteaders, spurred and booted cowboys came to dances . Peace officers frequently called at the Weatherford home for advice and assistance in chasing outlaws and in getting along with the Indians . Bill Weatherford started Baptist church services and his daughters taught school. His wife was the first postmistress, and the girls would put the postoffice receipts Qthey were rather small,sometimes amounting to only S15 a quartery under their mattresses for safe keeping. During the first years, the homesteaders had to convey their crops to E1 Reno by horse and wagon, to bring back most of their supplies from that railroad terminus. This trip meant fording the South Canadian River, often a dangerous task. One old timer remembers a man trying to bring a steam engine and threshing machine across the river only to lose both in the quicksand. In the summer of 1898, when the Choctaw railroad began laying its tracks westward from Geary, the present Weatherford was created. The rails would miss the old site by about a mile and a half to the south, it was found, and so the official town was platted where it now lies. iv ' E H fijiiit 2 K . , 1 gg.,-iq, - - 7.9 gg, ' sails'-gwf , -

Page 12 text:

Beeks Erick's house on the hill where the high school now stands. BUSY SPOT --Weatherford was a booming frontier town when this picture was taken. l-lORSE'N BUGGY DOCTOR. Old Doc Wllllams ready to make a call. In early days, doctors traveled on horseback ln two wheeled sulkeys or as times got better, team and buggy. They went at any hour of the day or night. REMEMBER WHEN? Many people now living will remember this early day drug store in Weatherford. was one of rejoicing and celebration. Hun- dreds of persons were on hand to welcome the train. For some time the town was the western terminus of the railroads in Oklahoma and business boomed as home- steaders brought their crops and livestock here and eastern wholesale houses used the town as an outlet for their goods. Meanwhile Press Keen had moved his store to the new site. During the first months. tents housed almost all of the businesses . Ed Sulllvan's restaurant and hotel seem to have been famous . Gamblers crowded into the town and badger games were frequent occurrences . The first newspaper was established by W. O. Mounts . Shortly afterward the paper was purchased by Adolf Bollenbach, who called it the Weatherford Booster. Under Bollenbach's vigorous editorship the Boos- ter made such a name for itself that some old timers still call the present weekly news the Booster. The first church services were held for all denominations in an unpainted small wooden structure. The first Methodist Church, half wood and half canvas, stood where Dr. T. A. Boyd's home is: its pastor was the late Rev. W. A. Randle. The first brick building constructed still stands on the corner of Main and Broadway and houses the offices of the Davenport Insurance Agency, Dr. E. W. Cotton, and the Eaton Drug Company. The second was diagonally across the street and is the present site of Hutto's Dry Goods Store. The first of these went up in February 1899. and the second in Sep- tember of the same year. Sixty-five years have lapsed since the firing of the eventful shot signalling the opening of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe country. Sixty-five years since our town let out a lusty yell at birth. . .and it's been moving ahead, growing, . . .gradually and steadily . . .ever since . QThe staff is indebted to the Weatherford News' tor the story of our town and to the pioneers of this community who contributed the pictures of early day Weatherfordj. Northwest part of Weatherford, 1898. , O .