Life on the frontier wasn't all about the ranchers and the soldiers. Ladies' hats in the Texas' Last Frontier Museum tell the story of Cochran County's more prosperous eras.

WHERE TO GO, WHAT TO DO

Start your Cochran County visit at the Texas' Last Frontier Historical Museum in Morton, housed in a 1957 Masonic Temple rehabilitated in 2003 by the county. This jewel of a museum has a series of engaging displays chronicling the history of the region as well as vividly documenting the development of the major ranches and other key community institutions (schools, churches, local businesses, the county hospital, and county and city governments). Other special exhibits include the important, but often unacknowledged, contributions of people of color to building and sustaining the life of the community, a large and growing collection of oral history interviews with early and long-time residents, and an engaging archive of photos as well as books and prints documenting early life and times in West Texas.

Pick up a brochure at the museum or access the link for a geocaching tour of the Buffalo Soldier Expedition of 1877. In the blistering hot and dry summer of July of that year, while in pursuit of a Comanche raiding party in the sandhills of western Cochran County and eastern New Mexico, Company A of the 10th U.S. cavalry unit of Buffalo Soldiers under the command of Capt. Nicholas Nolan became lost and were without water for eighty-six hours. A fascinating geocaching tour traces the route taken in 1877 by the soldiers and their buffalo hunter companions.

A Texas historical marker, standing sentinel on the dry Llano Estacado alongside four gravestones, tells the fate of the Buffalo Soldier Expedition of 1877. (photo by Lu Ann Aday)

Just down the street south of the museum is Cochran County's Texas Plains Trail Quanah Parker arrow marker honoring Chief Quanah and his role in brokering the safe and peaceful return of the party of the Comanches being sought by Capt. Nolan and the Buffalo Soldiers to the reservation at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. 

Dorothy Barker of the Cochran County Historical Commission at the Minnie Veal School building

Next to the giant arrow is one of the first school buildings in Cochran County, the Minnie Veal School, named for the eldest daughter of the largest rancher in Cochran County and erected in 1922 about two miles northeast of Morton, and which later served to house Texas' Last Frontier Historical Museum prior to it being moved to its present location.

Drive about half a mile north of Morton on SH 214 to visit the historic Morton Memorial Cemetery.At the front of the cemetery view the state historical marker acknowledging the Buffalo Soldier Expedition of 1877, as well as the four memorial markers honoring the four soldiers who perished in that tragic expedition. Toward the back of the cemetery, in a quiet location looking out over the sandhills west of Morton, take time to visit the beautiful stone memorial to the Native Americans who first inhabited this remote region of Texas.

From the cemetery, return to SH 214 drive and south to SH 125. Take SH 125 west to the historic railroad town of Bledsoe, at one time reportedly the largest cattle shipping point on the Santa Fe Railroad line. Or take SH 125 east to the town of Whiteface, a historically important cattle shipping and now oil-producing hub in Cochran County. Plan to visit the Whiteface Historical Museum, housed in the former Whiteface Hotel, built in 1926 to accommodate prospective farm buyers in the area.

If time permits, plan to drive by the headquarters of the Slaughter Ranch, just south of Morton off of SH 214, and/or the "Old Surratt Territory" Ranch, about 20 miles south of Morton, 2 � miles west of SH 214 on FM 1585. Both prominent Cochran County ranches have been honored with Texas Historical Commission markers.