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Desdemona is a former oil
boomtown
and virtual ghost
town located in Eastland
County east of Abilene
in West
Texas. The community is located on Texas
State Highway 16 at Farm-to-Market Roads 8 and 2214,
approximately twenty miles southeast of the county seat of Eastland
and twenty miles west of Stephenville,
site of Tarleton
State University.
Founded
as Hogtown
Dating to 1857, Desdemona was one of the first Texas
towns established west of the Brazos
River. Settlers constructed a small fort
on land owned by C.C. Blair for protection from Comanche
Indian
attacks. In 1873, Rockdale Baptist
Church, the first organization of any kind in Eastland County,
was constructed. Two years later, the brothers William and Ben
Funderburg acquired the former Fort Blair land and proceeded
to develop the community, then called Hogtown on Hog
Creek. A post
office was authorized in 1877 under the name
"Desdemona", a reference not to the character from Shakespeare,
but the daughter of an area justice
of the peace. During the 1890s,
agriculture
was important in Desdemona, particularly peanuts.
The population reached 340 in 1904.[1]
Boomtown
In 1914, businessman J.W. "Shorty" Carruth
drilled a shallow unproductive oil well and began selling
stock in his Carruth Oil Company though he misrepresented the
actual value of its worth. In 1923, a federal grand
jury indicted
Carruth for using the mail
to defraud investors of some $7 million. He pleaded guilty and
was sentenced to a year in the federal penitentiary
in Leavenworth,
Kansas.
The presiding judge likened Carruth to a
"highwayman".[2]
In September 1918, Tom Dees, director of the Hog Creek Oil
Company, struck oil on land owned by Joe Duke, and Desdemona
quickly joined the list of western
boomtowns. As many as sixteen thousand flocked to Desdemona
between 1919 and 1922. At this time, the Desdemona field was
perhaps the second largest in the oil belt, and stockholders
of the Hog Creek Oil Company could sell their $100 shares for
$10,250 each.[1]
Despite the newly-acquired wealth, Desdemona was beset with sanitation
problems when persistent rains flooded the streets and
overflowed the petroleum pools. Influenza
and typhoid
fever reached epidemic
proportions.[3]
While most of the men in Desdemona were working in the oil
fields, prostitution
flourished at the Lone Star Hotel on Main Street. In the
heyday of the oil boom, there were also at least four gambling
parlors in the community.[2]
To control lawlessness, Desdemona residents formed the
"Law and Order League". On November 20, 1920, fire
destroyed the Rockdale Baptist Church, then pastored by J. A.
Kidd, one of the more vocal of the townspeople who rallied
against the lawless element. In April 1920, Texas
Rangers, who had been patrolling other boomtowns,
including Eastland, Ranger,
and Cisco,
arrived in Desdemona. The officers arrested some 125 men, and
expelled about the same number of prostitutes.[3]
Ghost
town
Oil production dropped from more than seven million barrels
in 1919 to fewer than three million in 1921. The boom ended
nearly as quickly as it began, and much of the newer
population abandoned the community. Another fire in 1921
destroyed an entire block. The Lone Star Hotel was also
burned. With few residents, Desdemona dissolved its municipal
government in 1936, and the general area has since been
governed by Eastland County. The Desdemona public
school (grades 1-12) was built in 1922, expanded as a Works
Progress Administration project in 1937, and closed
because of lack of enrollment in 1969.[3]
In 1976, ninety wells were still producing oil or natural
gas in the Desdemona field, and a Mobil
plant was producing butane.
In 1980 and again in 2000, the Desdemona population was
reported as 180. There were three businesses in the area in
1980.[1]
The Hog Town General
Store, operated by Mary Riggs, is one of the businesses
remaining in Desdemona.[4] |