Site of the First Court House Built in Reagan County
Big Lake, Reagan County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The following officials were installed May 8, 1903 Joseph J. Boyd, judge, J. B. Lucas, clerk, Henry Japson, sheriff and tax col., Frank Ramsey, treasurer, W.C. Shamlin, surveyor, M. D. Sutherland, assessor, Commissioners: Jno. E. Gardner, W. C. Castlebury, A. J. Kerchville, G. F. Kirk. The county seat was moved in 1925 to Big Lake. Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Reagan County was carved out of the vast West Texas ranchlands and organized in 1903, its first slate of officials took office in a courthouse on this site, deep in the sparsely settled Permian Basin. The roster of judge, clerk, sheriff, surveyor, and commissioners reflects the machinery of frontier self-government taking root on the open range. In 1925 the county seat moved to Big Lake, and the state marked this founding spot in 1936 during the Texas Centennial.
Why it matters
The birth of county government on the West Texas frontier shows how American civic institutions followed settlers into even the most remote corners of the range.
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Related people
- · Joseph J. Boyd
- · Henry Japson
- · Frank Ramsey
Related events
- · Organization of Reagan County (1903)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Stiles Courthouse
Big Lake, TX
Built in 1911 from stone quarried just half a mile away at a cost of $20,000, this courthouse served the county until 1925, when the seat of government moved to Big Lake. In the years that followed it found new life as a community center and, for a single year, a school.
Stiles Cemetery
Big Lake, TX
Established around 1903 on the ranchland of settlers G. W. and Lizzie Stiles, this three-acre cemetery reads like a frontier chronicle. Its graves hold cowboys killed in range accidents, a Spanish-American War veteran, and victims of shootings, rattlesnake bites, and a dysentery epidemic—though most, the marker notes, were pioneers of quiet and steady lives. The plot was deeded to the county in 1920 by J. D. Wagner, a wanderer who split his years between Texas and South America.
Reagan County
Big Lake, TX
Reagan County was carved from Tom Green County and organized in 1903 as ranching and, later, oil pushed settlement across the West Texas plains. It honors John H. Reagan (1818-1905), an Indian fighter, surveyor, and long-serving Texas congressman who became Postmaster General of the Confederacy and later a founding force of the Texas Railroad Commission. The county seat moved from Stiles to Big Lake in 1925.
John E. Gardner Place
Big Lake, TX
This mud-mortared house of native stone is the oldest in Reagan County, a plain and practical dwelling built without window glass — its openings closed instead by swinging shutters. It survives as a rare witness to how the first families made a home on the arid West Texas range, using only the stone at hand.