Site of the Trading Post
Perryton, Ochiltree County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Established by C. E. Jones in 1874 on the Jones and Plummer Trail which extended from Dodge City, Kansas, to Mobeetie. Here food and cloth were traded to Indians for hides and later ranchmen purchased general supplies hauled from Dodge City. Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
C. E. Jones opened this trading post in 1874 along the Jones and Plummer Trail, the freight and cattle route running from Dodge City, Kansas, down to Mobeetie in the Texas Panhandle. At first it dealt food and cloth to Native peoples in exchange for hides; as ranching took hold, it became a supply stop for cattlemen hauling goods up from Dodge City. The State of Texas marked the site in 1936.
Why it matters
The post sits at the meeting point of the Plains hide trade and the open-range cattle economy that opened the Panhandle to settlement.
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Related people
- · C. E. Jones
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Route of Jones & Plummer Trail
Booker, TX
Opened around 1874, the Jones & Plummer Trail began as a freight route hauling buffalo hides north from the Texas Panhandle to the railhead at Dodge City, Kansas. In the same violent year it carried supplies to the U.S. Army campaign against the Southern Plains tribes and hauled materials to build Fort Elliott near Mobeetie. As the buffalo vanished and ranching took hold, the old hide road became a cattle trail before fading out around 1885.
Ochiltree Townsite
Perryton, TX
Ochiltree County was created in 1876 and named for Texas jurist William Beck Ochiltree, but settlers only began digging dugouts near Wolf Creek in 1886, organizing the county in 1889 with their village as county seat. A two-story courthouse of Dodge City lumber rose in 1891 and doubled as church, school, and social hall; by 1903 the town of Ochiltree had 600 people, a bank, flour mill, and newspaper. When the Santa Fe Railway founded Perryton 8 miles north in 1919, the railroad lured residents with free lots and whole buildings were hauled to the new site.
Notla Community
Perryton, TX
As Texas sold public school lands to spur settlement, families like the Wambles and Taylors carved out a community in southeastern Ochiltree County around 1901. Located halfway on the Ochiltree–Glazier Road, the settlement gained a school, a general store with gas pumps, and in 1920 a post office named Notla—'Alton' spelled backward, since Alton was taken. As automobiles and better roads reshaped the region, the post office closed in 1944 and the school burned in 1966, leaving mostly memory behind.
George Morgan Perry
Perryton, TX
An Iowa native, George Morgan Perry came to the raw Texas Panhandle in 1886 and helped stitch a frontier region into an organized county, serving as clerk and judge. A tireless booster of the railroads then reaching the plains, he was honored when the Santa Fe placed a townsite on its line in 1919 and named it Perryton for him. As the town's first Chamber of Commerce president, he promoted its settlement and growth until his death in 1944.