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It’s been eight months since we moved into a one-hundred-year-old hotel. Eight months of meeting new people, and eight months of hard work. My wife and I both have our day jobs, so the cleaning and hosting and fixing happens during our time off. We make quite the team. Though I’m involved in the normal business … Continue reading
Josiah “Doc” Scurlock was a colorful character who rode with Billy the Kid and found no shortage of trouble in his younger years, including having his front teeth shot out over a card game dispute. The other man wasn’t as lucky. Scurlock was born in Alabama in 1849 but moved west as a young man. … Continue reading
By John Bird Eastland, Texas is best known for its most famous citizen of the past—a horned toad named Old Rip. Eastland County was amid a boom in the last years of the 19th century, and a larger courthouse was built in 1897. During the dedication, dignitaries placed various things in the courthouse cornerstone as … Continue reading
In 1918, Eastland County, Texas was in an oil boom. From 1910 to 1920, the population of the county more than doubled, and what had been a farming area became the tenth most populated county in Texas for a time. The growth meant new businesses, including the three-story building one block from the courthouse that … Continue reading
The Santa Claus Bank Robbery happened in Cisco, Texas on December 23, 1927 and resulted in the last public mob lynching in the state. The details are well-known in Cisco and Eastland, and the story is notorious in Texas, as it was one of the last true examples of the wild west. Readers can find … Continue reading