Frye-Puryear Home
Wheeler, Wheeler County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built 1884. Native stone, windows and lumber hauled 200 miles south from Dodge City, by Henry Frye, 1877 settler who had bought land of buffalo hunter and dugout dweller Dick Bussell. Had first wood floors in county. Mail came out from Mobeetie to Frye Post Office here, 1897-1909. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1964
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1884 by 1877 settler Henry Frye, this native-stone home used windows and lumber hauled some 200 miles from Dodge City and boasted the first wood floors in the county. Frye had bought his land from a buffalo hunter who lived in a dugout, and from 1897 to 1909 the house served as the Frye Post Office, with mail coming out from Mobeetie. It stands as a rare early landmark of the Texas Panhandle frontier.
Why it matters
The Frye-Puryear home marks the transition of the Panhandle from buffalo range and dugout shelters to permanent stone-built settlement.
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Related people
- · Henry Frye
- · Dick Bussell
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fletcher and Donley Stage Station
Canadian, TX
In the 1870s and '80s, this stop northwest of present-day Canadian offered rest and mail service to wagon trains, buffalo-hide caravans, and cattle herds crossing the Panhandle. Run by former buffalo hunter-scout Ed Fletcher and his partners — all seasoned frontiersmen — the station was a sod-roofed log cabin flanked by a brush arbor and a pump. The area's first election was held here in 1882, on ground that would soon become Hemphill County.
Mobeetie
Mobeetie, TX
Mobeetie claims to be the oldest town in the Texas Panhandle, beginning as a trading post in 1874 and relocating to sit nearer the protection of Fort Elliott the following year. First called Sweetwater and renamed in 1879, it grew into a rough, lively hub of hunters, cowboys, and gamblers, and in 1881 became the judicial seat of the 35th District — where Temple Houston, son of Sam Houston, served as district attorney and state senator. Bypassed by the Santa Fe Railroad in 1888 and battered by an 1898 tornado, the town faded into decline.
Mobeetie Post Office
Mobeetie, TX
Mail service in Wheeler County began at Fort Elliott before a U.S. post office opened in 1879 in the town of Mobeetie—earlier called Sweetwater—with George A. Montgomery as first postmaster. When the town relocated a mile north to the Santa Fe rail line, a new post office rose here in 1928. Rural routes expanded to reach the region's growing farm families in the 1930s, then contracted as drought and hardship emptied the surrounding land.
Route of Marcy Trail
Canadian, TX
In 1849 the resourceful Army Captain R. B. Marcy blazed this overland route across the Texas Panhandle, best known as a branch of the great California gold trail carrying emigrants west. His wagon roads were later eyed in 1853 as the path for the nation's first transcontinental railroad, until the Civil War pushed that dream to northern routes. The trail's importance faded once the railroad finally reached the county in 1887.