Along what I call the ‘northern route’ of State Highway 114, it’s about 340 miles from Dallas to Lubbock; a trip that will take you from 450 feet1 above sea level, to more than 3,200 feet;2 3 from “humid sub-tropical,”4 with more than 38 inches of rainfall annually, to an entirely different climate–“semi-arid”5 with less than half that amount of rain.6
These are truly significant differences, affecting every aspect of life in these two places, separated only by a few hours’ drive. And yet during that drive from one to the other, the transition unfolds rather subtly, passing from the windshield to the rear-view mirror, as we slice though in air-conditioned comfort. Now there’s nothing wrong with that, of course. I done paid my dues growing up, driving and riding in trucks and cars that were, in the truest sense of these words: “air conditioned.”
But no need to worry, weary traveler, because you can keep your windows up, the A/C blastin’, and the pedal to the metal (like the good Texan you are, either real or imagined) and still (!), with the info that I’m about to provide, you can have a slightly greater understanding of, and dare I say appreciation for, the landscapes that unfold before you, and for the deep map–a map that captures at once the past, present and envisioned future of a place–that you drive through, on the way from Dallas to Lubbock.
From high-rise to high plains, where to focus?
A question arises then: Where, along this 300+ mile journey, are the stretches of land and/or highway that best demonstrate these transitions–geologically, topographically, historically, culturally or otherwise? Where to focus?
The possibilities are endless, I believe, because the number of ‘lenses’ through which any territory can be viewed and interpreted, are endless as well. But alas, my time and talent are limited, and choices must be made, so I will focus on just two, at least for now.
The first of these is the stretch of Highway 114, from Jacksboro to Seymour, which I’ll elaborate on below. A second, which I will cover in a future installment, is Dickens to Crosbyton, which lie, respectively 1) at the base of, and 2) atop, the Caprock Escarpment. The journey between them is only about 24 miles, and the elevation climb, and although it is the single largest step-up in the entire rough from Dallas to Lubbock, is also a fairly modest one, at about 500 feet.
But the geological age that separates these two regions–the older Rolling Plains of Dickens and Seymour below, and the younger High Plains of Crosbyton and Lubbock above, is a staggering 240 million years. <–Not a typo.
You knew them crazy Texas drove fast, but I reckon you never understood just how fast. So if you’re looking for a road trip that allows you to cover 24 miles, and 240 million years, in 20 minutes, with the A/C a’ blastin’ then y’all come7.
Jacksboro to Seymour
Coming Soon!
The journey betwthen is the single largest step-up in elevation along the entire route, transporting you, quite literally, in about 20 minutes time, from the Rolling Plains below to the High Plains above.
My preferred route from Dallas to Lubbock is what I call the “northern route,” on State Highways 114, then 82, as opposed to the “southern route” on I-20 through Abilene. Nothing wrong with the latter of course, nor the fine locales it’ll take you to or through–Abilene, then up through Snyder, Post, and others–nothing wrong with those a’tall.
But the northern route, with the smaller roads and highways, is the one I prefer. It allows you plenty of opportunities–indeed strong encouragement, depending on your degree of wanderlust–to slow down, to look around, and maybe even ‘set a spell.’8
Eventually, as this site grows, I plan to make my way down to this more southern route, as well as the numerous ones ‘in between’–like 380 through Bryson, Newcastle, Graham and Throckmorton, and 180 through Mineral Wells, Pledger, Los Ybanez and Lamesa. It’s a big state y’all, with lots of stories just waiting to be told and re-told–just like with yours I’m sure.
High Rise to High Plains
Obviously, there’s lots of differences between Dallas and Lubbock. Most obvious perhaps, is the difference in population:9 Dallas, at 1.3M, is about 5 times larger than Lubbock, at 272K. Comparing the metro areas, DFW (which includes Fort Worth, Arlington, and many other cities), is 23 times larger.
One of my favorite ‘legs’ of the trip from Dallas to Lubbock is the one from Jacksboro to Seymour. along State Highway 114. But it’s one where you can see a transition, from farmland to ranchland, and viscerally feel, millions of years of still-unfolding history.
Leaving Olney, headed west, you’re also leaving behind the comparatively flat lands of the Western Cross Timbers10 region, which begin around Jacksboro, continuing on across the ancient ‘Texas Red Beds,’ and on into the rolling hills as you approach Seymour.
The cast iron forest
The Cross Timbers–with Olney and Jacksboro on the western edge of it, thus “Western Cross Timbers”–is an ancient ‘mosaic’ of forest, woodland, savanna, and prairies, extending from southeastern Kansas, through central and eastern Oklahoma, and into north-central Texas.
The name is said to have originated from early travelers, from around 1820 to 1850, for whom ‘crossing the timbers’ was a major obstacle in their west-bound journeys. In 1844, frontiersman Josiah Gregg11 wrote: “The Cross Timbers vary in width from five to thirty five miles and entirely cut off the communication betwixt the interior prairies and those of the Great Plains.”
The prairie’s repeated cycle of fire and re-growth produced undergrowth that became “more and more dense [with] every reproduction,” writes Gregg. “The underwood is so matted in many places with grapevines, green-briars, etc., as to form almost impenetrable ‘roughs,’ which serve as hiding-places for wild beasts, as well as wild Indians; and would, in savage warfare, prove almost as formidable as the hammocks of Florida.”
In the wooded areas, the post oaks and blackjack oaks of the Cross Timbers are short, with gnarled and twisting trunks, making them less suitable for lumber. Their slow growth due to sandy, shallow soil and their survival through frequent prairie grass fires, produced exceptionally hard wood and thick bark, making it hard for tools of the day to handle.
These same prairie fires scorched the lower twigs and branches, “leaving them black and hard,” writes author and historian Washington Irving, “so as to tear the flesh of man and horse that had to scramble through them. I shall not easily forget the mortal toil and vexations of the flesh and spirit, that we underwent occasionally, in our wanderings through the Cross Timber. It was like struggling through forests of cast iron.”
Rolling hills
It was just before sundown, and I was in a bit of a hurry to arrive, hoping to have a look around before it got dark.
About a half mile before reaching town, I came upon a road sign, just off the highway. It was small, with the standard background color–‘Highway Green‘–and with the standard white font–‘Highway Gothic’. It’s the kind of sign that you might just ignore, especially if you’re in a hurry, except for the single word written there: “Cemetery,” along with an arrow, pointing left, up FM 1286.
Hmm. A cemetery. Maybe I should turn up there and check it out, I thought. Or maybe I should just go on into town.
What would you do?
And please don’t say ‘it depends.’ Everything depends. We know that already. Embrace the constraint of this binary choice, then choose, then ask yourself the ‘why’ of your choice. What are the motivations for why you travel–they will likely have determined your choice. What is your level of wanderlust?
When working on this project, a lesson I’ve learned–and yet keep forgetting–is that ‘being in a hurry’ just doesn’t work out so well. First, the expansive distances out here will mock your haste–and yes even if you’re driving 80+ as most do. And second, it’s a trade-off, a kind of gamble, really–you’re gambling that whatever it is you’re headed for, in such an ‘all-fired hurry,’12 is better, more interesting, or more rewarding than what you assume you’re passing up.
I’m not much of a gambler, so for me the choice was not too difficult: cemetery.
That afternoon I had traveled the 34 miles from Olney[1]…with a stop at the DQ there for the obligatory chocolate malt, with extra malt, please and thank you., northwest on Highway 114, through Megargel, Westover, and finally into Seymour, where I planned to stay the night.
About a half mile before reaching town, there’s a sign just off the highway, one you might overlook. It’s small but official, what traffic engineers call a ‘guidance sign’ but it’s effect on me was more like that of ‘invitation.’ In the standard color: ‘Highway Green‘ and in the standard font: ‘Highway Gothic’ it reads: “Cemetery” with an arrow pointing left, up FM 1286 (Ogden Road).
“Oddity” = “Opportunity”
What’s your reaction when you see something odd? Not threatening or dangerous, just unexpected. Like an odd-shaped cloud, for example, or the neighbor’s new dog–a breed you don’t recognize. Could also be an odd sound, or smell, or even an unexpected thought that pops into your head.
Are you the more curious type, who stops what you’re doing to learn more? Or the less curious type, who offers up a ‘Huh’ and then gets on with your day?13
It depends, I suppose, on how busy you are, how important or interesting that particular oddity is for youFor this project, it’s proven useful to remind myself that in general, people–and certainly not ‘things’–don’t set out intentionally, to act or to be ‘odd.’ The implication is that whenever I experience something as odd, it’s often me: I’m the odd man out. In other words, it’s less their oddity, and more my non-understanding.
And if you’re willing to put yourself into this mindset, on the way from Dallas to Lubbock, or anywhere, really, then every oddity is also an opportunity at least, although not an obligation, to learn more about people and places and themes and epochs that, by definition, you don’t yet understand.
Century-old headstones shaped like tree trunks
So would it strike you as odd, as it certainly did me, to find among a perfectly ‘normal’ cemetery near Seymour, a headstone, ornately carved into the shaped of a tree trunk, with leaves, axes, mauls, a dove, a ‘footstone’ with the initials of the deceased, and a Latin (?) inscription “dum tacet clamat” adding further to the mystery?
‘Odd’ would be an understatement of my initial reaction to this monument. With it’s unique and ornate engravings, and having endured more than a hundred years of relentless Texas sun, it remained upright and strong. I had never seen anything like it.
Unbeknownst to me at the time however, is that despite its striking features, it is not rare. Those who know, will immediately recognize the headstone as belonging to the grave of a former member of the Woodmen of the World (WOW), one of the numerous fraternal organizations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although estimates vary, there may be more than 45,000 similar WOW headstones (so-called ‘treestones’) nationwide, mostly in the midwestern and southern states.
During the “Golden Age of Fraternalism” in the US, from 1870-1910, as many as 10.6 million were enrolled in fraternal organization and their auxiliary organizations for women and youth14 including Freemasons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, and WOW.
Historian David Beito estimates that the high point for WOW enrollment was around 1 million, in 1910. For all fraternal organizations, as many as 30% of American adult men were member of one ore more such organizations.15
It’s probably a safe claim to make that no other institution or group of institutions has approached this level of participation, and probably never will, due to the sheer number of volunteer organizations available today. Enrollment percents of adult American males today, for example, include: the Catholic Church–15-20%;16 labor unions: 6-7%;17 military (active duty): less than 1%.
Local and regional WOW organizations were referred to as Camps, and there were dozens around the state in the early 1900s. The 1911 WOW convention at the Chautauqua in Mineral Wells (below) drew ‘several thousand’ participants.18
One story’s end is another’s beginning
The story of Peter Quin Bridges, at least the story of ‘his earthly life’ as my Mom would have put it, comes to an end on April 27, 1902, at Goree, Texas, as recorded on his ornate marker above. My story about Mr. Bridges, picks up where his left off, about one hundred and twenty years later, on July 22nd, 2022, when I happened upon his grave at the Masonic Cemetery near Seymour.
My thought process went something like this: Because it’s just before sundown, at the end of a long, hot (and still hot) day in mid-July, in a small Texas town, even if I went into town straightaway, the odds of funding a local library, one still open, where I might learn more about the town and its history were: precisely zero. The odds that even if I arrived later, and especially since it was a Friday, I’d still be able to find some place with an ice cold beer for sale: 100 percent. And finally, 50/50: The less certain but still enticing odds that, because this was right in the middle of what photographers call ‘golden hour’–the magical few minutes after sunrise or before sunset where the sun’s light, cast from low on the horizon produces soft and diffused illumination–even an amateur photographer like me might be able to capture some good shots.
Cemetery.
I turned off the highway and headed due south on FM1285, to the Masonic Cemetery and the final earthly resting place of one Peter Quin Bridges.
Peter Quin Bridges
Thanks to genealogical research by family members and other contributors, we know that Mr. Bridges was born on October 11th, 1853. Thanks to these same contributors and just a few minutes of sleuthing the interwebs by yours truly, we also know that he was born to Peter Quin Sr., and his father’s brother, whose father was born in County Tyrone, Ireland, moved to the new world as a youngster, and fought in the American revolutionary war at 26, survived that and moved to MS. And just like that, the coulple hundred years separating all these events seems not so long at all. Like a very long straight rod, when viewed end on, looks short.
And we know this chapter, this link in the chain, comes to and in on Goree, TX, about 19 miles to the southeast, where today you can find “Cranky Boys Liquidators”
- USGS ↩︎
- About Lubbock, published by Texas Tech University ↩︎
- Do you think the good people of Lubbock have ever considered that they can, if they wish ‘look down on the people of Dallas’? Have the good people of Dallas have ever considered that they really do ‘look up to’ the people of Lubbock? Asking for a friend. ↩︎
- These are the Köppen classifications. More here. ↩︎
- And a source locale, of course, along with Phoenix, Bakersfield and other places, for one the most pervasive lies ever told: “Yeah, but it’s a dry heat.” ↩︎
- NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). “U.S. Climate Normals, 1991-2020.” Released May 2021. ↩︎
- The original, from 1953, by Arlie Duff, of Jack’s Branch, Texas ↩︎
- I’m reminded here of my Grandpa. He was from Arkansas, and would use this phrase occasionally. Another memory, is that when I went to visit, which I did often, no matter how long I stayed, an hour or a week, whenever it was time to leave, he’d always ask ‘What’s your hurry?’
Now that I’ve mentioned him, I’m compelled to write a bit more.
I’ll never forget the last time I saw him, standing on his porch, with a cane, a smile, and a big wave goodbye. I’d graduated from college, and was I headed overseas, to Japan, for work. I’d gone to wish him (and my Grandma) farewell.
About a year later, living in Osaka, I got a call from my brother, telling me, tearfully, that he had passed away in his sleep. I got off the phone, packed up and headed for the airport. The immigration officer looked through my passport, then paused and looked at me. ‘You realize there’s no re-entry permit here on this visa?’
Truth was, no I didn’t know then how these things worked. ‘If you leave,’ he said, not impolitely just matter-of-factly, ‘you’ll have to re-apply before re-entering to work.’ Holding his ‘departed’ stamp over the work visa page he asked ‘What would you like to do?’ ‘I have to go,’ I said.
He stamped the passport, and I was on my way. I attended the funeral, a blazing hot beautiful sunny day it was. The renewal of the cancelled work visa turned out to be a nightmare, delaying my return for weeks, but I had (nor have) no regrets. ↩︎ - US Census data: For cities and towns; and for MSAs ↩︎
- Texas A&M Forest Service ↩︎
- “Historical Descriptions of the Ancient Cross Timbers” published by the Dept. of Geosciences, University of Arkansas. Original source: Gregg, Josia. 1844. Commerce of the Prairies (The 1844 Edition Unabridged.) Edited by Hanna, Archibald, and Goetzman. Philidelphia and New York: J.B. Lippincott Co,1962. p. 283. More on Josiah Gregg ↩︎
- The ‘all-fired’ portion of ‘all-fired hurry,’ according to the OED, is an ‘intensifier’ of whatever follows–in this case: ‘hurry.’ All-fired is an American colloquialism, dates to about 1829, and indicates “extremely” or “completely.” It’s also a euphemism for “hell-fired”–a way to express intensity without profanity, what linguists call “minced oath”–a cleaned-up version of stronger language that maintains the expressive punch while staying socially acceptable. More here. ↩︎
- I don’t recall where or from whom I heard it, but one of my favorite jokes is: Doctors have discovered a cure for apathy. The problem is that those who are afflicted by it simply aren’t interested. ↩︎
- Stevens, Albert Clark, ed. The Cyclopaedia of Fraternities. Gale Research Company, 1907. ↩︎
- Beito, David T. From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890–1967. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. ↩︎
- Pew Research Center, Religious Landscape Study (2020). ↩︎
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Union Membership Annual Report (2023). ↩︎
- [The Woodmen of the World Convention at the Chautauqua], photograph, 1911; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth39214/), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boyce Ditto Public Library. ↩︎
References
| ↑1 | …with a stop at the DQ there for the obligatory chocolate malt, with extra malt, please and thank you. |
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