Toyah
Toyah, Reeves County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Began as division point, 1881, on T. & P. Railway, with shops, roundhouse, hotel, cafe. Water was hauled from Monahans and sold by the barrel. Stage took passengers and mail to Brogado. 1882 cattle shipping brought cowboy-detective Charles Siringo here to look for rustlers. (1964)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Toyah began in 1881 as a division point on the Texas & Pacific Railway, complete with shops, roundhouse, hotel, and cafe—though water was so scarce it had to be hauled in from Monahans and sold by the barrel. A stage carried passengers and mail onward, and by 1882 the cattle-shipping trade drew the famous cowboy-detective Charles Siringo here to hunt rustlers.
Why it matters
Toyah captures the hard-scrabble making of a West Texas railroad town, where the tracks brought commerce and cattle to a land that could barely spare a drink of water.
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Related people
- · Charles Siringo
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Reeves County-Pecos, Texas
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The flat, arid Toyah Valley around Pecos drew farmers to its river and springs long before the town existed—Native people are believed to have irrigated crops here in the 16th century, and Mexican farmers later raised grain and vegetables. Cattlemen arrived in the 1870s, and the Texas & Pacific Railway's 1882 line to El Paso brought merchants and mechanics to Pecos City and Toyah. Large-scale irrigated agriculture began around 1900, aided by deep wells and the 1935 dam, the only one on the Pecos River in Texas.
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In 1849 Texas Rangers and statesmen Robert S. Neighbors and John S. "Rip" Ford opened the first wagon road from Austin to El Paso, guided by the Delaware scout Jim Shaw and a Comanche named Guadalupe. Leaving the Pecos, they followed Toyah Creek to the Davis Mountains and pushed west to the Rio Grande, and on the return—their rations gone—they subsisted on roasted mescal, panther, and horse meat. The route they proved out, with its wood and water, became a major stage, military, and emigrant road.
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