Site of Old Pease City
Crowell, Foard County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded in 1880 by Benjamin E. Lower, John Wesley and wife, first settlers. Lower became the first postmaster, 1880; Mrs. Wesley was second, 1882. Place was named for Pease River and E. M. Pease, Texas Governor (1853-57 and 1867-69). Second group of settlers was family of W. T. Dunn. Stone post office-trading post served 3,500 square miles of sparsely settled country. Mail delivery was by stage or horse. The post office was abolished 1885 when Margaret became seat of Hardeman County. In 1891 site of Old Pease City and Margaret became part of Foard County. (1968)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1880 by early settlers Benjamin E. Lower and the Wesley family, Pease City grew around a stone post office and trading post that served some 3,500 square miles of thinly settled North Texas country, with mail carried by stage or horseback. Named for the Pease River and Governor E. M. Pease, the town faded when its post office closed in 1885 and the county seat shifted to Margaret. The site later became part of Foard County.
Why it matters
Pease City is a classic frontier ghost town, showing how tiny trading posts rose and vanished with the shifting fortunes of settlement and county government.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1880 the country of North Texas along the Pease River was right on the edge of settlement. Only a few years earlier the southern Plains had been Comanche and Kiowa homeland, and the vast buffalo herds had been hunted almost to nothing. With the Red River War of the mid-1870s over and the herds gone, ranchers and a thin stream of settlers began moving onto the rolling plains.
Counties existed on paper here long before they had enough people to function. Big stretches of territory were attached to organized neighbors for courts and records, and a single post office might be the only official presence of government for many miles.
That was the world Pease City was born into. A trading post there was a lifeline. It connected isolated ranch families to mail, supplies and news from the rest of the country.
People & events
According to the marker, Pease City was founded in 1880 by Benjamin E. Lower along with John Wesley and his wife, its first settlers. Lower became the first postmaster that year. In 1882 Mrs. Wesley took over as the second, a notable detail at a time when a woman holding a federal appointment was far from routine. The family of W. T. Dunn made up the second group of settlers.
The town's name honored two things at once: the nearby Pease River and Elisha M. Pease, who served as governor of Texas in the 1850s and again after the Civil War. The river had already carried his name, so the settlement tied itself to both the landscape and the state's political history.
Pease City's real importance was its stone post office and trading post, which served an astonishing 3,500 square miles of sparsely settled country. Mail came by stage or on horseback. Then politics decided the town's fate. When Margaret became the seat of Hardeman County in 1885, the Pease City post office was abolished. In 1891 the old town site and Margaret both became part of the newly organized Foard County, and Pease City passed into memory.
Its place in the American story
Pease City is a textbook case of a pattern repeated across the American West. Tiny settlements sprang up around a post office, a store or a trail crossing, and then withered when the county seat, the railroad or the mail route went somewhere else. For every frontier town that grew into a city, many more became names on old maps.
It also shows how much the federal post office mattered to western settlement. For isolated families, the post office was often the most important link to the outside world, carrying letters, newspapers, catalogs and money. Where the post office went, communities tended to follow, and when it closed, they often faded.
Finally, the story of Pease City reflects how Texas drew and redrew its county lines as population moved west. Those boundary decisions made some towns and unmade others.
If you visit
Today the marker stands in Foard County near Crowell, in open ranch and farm country. Don't expect ruins or a restored main street. Pease City is a ghost town, and much of its appeal is imagining a busy trading post where there is now mostly quiet land.
Take a moment to picture the scale: a single post office serving thousands of square miles, with riders and stages carrying the mail across these same plains. The emptiness around you is what makes that story come alive.
The marker pairs well with a drive through the rolling country of North Texas along the Pease River. If you like ghost towns and frontier history, it is a thoughtful stop on a slower back-roads route across the region.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Benjamin E. Lower
- · E. M. Pease
Themes & tags
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