T-Anchor Ranch Headquarters
Canyon, Randall County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built by Leigh R. Dyer, 1877, of logs cut from Palo Duro Canyon. Oldest surviving house in Texas Panhandle. Dyer did first Panhandle farming. Sold 1878, to Gunter, Summerfield and Munson. Became center of area ranching and development. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1967.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Raised in 1877 from logs cut in the dramatic depths of Palo Duro Canyon, the T-Anchor headquarters is counted as the oldest surviving house in the Texas Panhandle. Its builder, Leigh R. Dyer, broke the region's first farmland here before selling out in 1878 to a partnership that made the spread a hub of Panhandle ranching and settlement.
Why it matters
It stands as a tangible relic of the moment open-range ranching turned the empty Panhandle into settled country, one of the last great chapters of American westward expansion.
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Related people
- · Leigh R. Dyer
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
J. Evetts Haley
Canyon, TX
Raised on West Texas ranches and rodeo arenas, J. Evetts Haley turned a UT history degree into a lifelong mission to preserve the story of the cattle country. As the first field secretary of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society from 1925, he interviewed old trail drivers and collected the documents and artifacts that stock museums across the region, and he wrote acclaimed books on Charles Goodnight and the XIT Ranch. An outspoken public figure, he helped found the body that became the Texas Historical Commission.
The Charles Goodnight Memorial Trail
Canyon, TX
This route retraces the path Charles Goodnight rode in 1876 when he drove 1,600 cattle down from Colorado into the sheltering depths of Palo Duro Canyon to found the first ranch on the Texas Staked Plains. Born in Illinois in 1836 and hardened on the frontier, Goodnight blazed some 2,000 miles of cattle trail with partner Oliver Loving, built the vast JA Ranch with John Adair, and became the archetype of the Texas cowman. He also preserved a buffalo herd, founded a college, and fought for law and order until his death in 1929.
Sam Wood Cabin
Canyon, TX
Sam Wood raised this cabin in 1887 at Hog Town, now a Panhandle ghost town. A Union Civil War veteran, buffalo hunter, and Indian scout, Wood was father of the bride in the first marriage recorded in the Panhandle, held at Fort Elliott in 1877, and his cabin once sheltered six families during an Indian scare. Moved and restored in 1954, it survives as a rare relic of frontier life on the high plains.
First Methodist Church of Canyon
Canyon, TX
Methodist leaders held Canyon's earliest religious service in 1889, and that October the Rev. B. F. Jackson organized the city's first church with a handful of founding families. Jackson preached to large crowds in Palo Duro Canyon in 1890 and conducted the community's first funeral and first wedding the next year. The congregation raised its original building under its first regular pastor in 1900, as the Panhandle town itself was just taking hold.