W. B. Anglin
Midland, Midland County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A member, Company B, Frontier Battalion of Texas Rangers. Killed near here while trailing Comanche Indian raiding party on July 1, 1879. He was buried on the spot where he fell. A native of Virginia, member of one of its first families, he joined rangers in 1875 at about age 25. Anglin was last man to be killed by Indians in central west Texas. He was known for his bravery, kindness, good humor and unceasing devotion to duty. Recorded - 1967
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
W.B. Anglin, a Virginia-born member of Company B of the Texas Rangers' Frontier Battalion, joined the force around 1875 at about age 25. On July 1, 1879, he was killed near this spot while trailing a Comanche raiding party and was buried where he fell. Remembered for his bravery and good humor, Anglin is recorded as the last man slain by Indians in central West Texas.
Why it matters
Anglin's death marks the closing of the frontier-conflict era in West Texas, when the Texas Rangers and the Comanche contested the last open range.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1870s, the western edge of Texas settlement was a genuine frontier, and a violent one. The plains were still contested ground between newcomers pushing west and the Comanche, whose mastery of the southern plains had shaped the region for generations. Isolated homesteads and small settlements lived with the real possibility of raids.
To hold that line, Texas leaned on the Rangers. The Frontier Battalion was organized in the mid-1870s specifically to patrol the settled frontier and respond to raids — a mounted force expected to cover enormous distances across hard country. Its men were not garrison soldiers but riders who tracked, pursued, and fought in the open.
By the late 1870s, the tide was turning against the free-roaming plains tribes across the whole southern plains, and the era of large-scale raiding was drawing toward its close. But "toward its close" is not the same as over, and the last stretch of any long conflict can still be lethal to the individual man on patrol.
People & events
W. B. Anglin was a native of Virginia, remembered as a member of one of that state's early families, who came to Texas and joined the Rangers in 1875 at about twenty-five years of age. He served in Company B of the Frontier Battalion — one of the mounted units charged with guarding the settled frontier.
On July 1, 1879, Anglin was killed near this spot while trailing a Comanche raiding party. He was buried where he fell, a frontier practice that speaks to the isolation of the country he died in: there was no carrying him home. The marker records that he was the last man killed by Indians in central West Texas, which places his death at the very edge of an era's ending.
What lingers in the record is the way he was remembered — for his bravery, his kindness, his good humor, and his unceasing devotion to duty. Those are the words of men who knew him, and they turn a name and a date into a person: not just a Ranger who died in the line of duty, but one his comrades genuinely mourned.
Its place in the American story
Anglin's death sits almost exactly on the hinge of American history where the open frontier closed. For much of the nineteenth century, the line between settlement and Indigenous territory moved steadily westward amid conflict; by 1879, on the plains of central West Texas, that line was nearly gone. To be "the last man" killed in such a conflict is to stand at the boundary of two eras.
The Texas Rangers became one of the enduring symbols of that frontier period, and stories like Anglin's are the human material beneath the legend. Behind the mythology of the Ranger is the reality of a young man from Virginia riding hard country and dying on it, far from where he was born.
The marker also quietly records a national story of loss and displacement. The end of Comanche raiding meant the end of Comanche dominion over the southern plains — a profound and often tragic transformation for Native peoples that ran alongside the settlers' sense of a frontier finally made safe. Both truths belong to this ground.
If you visit
Stand here and take in the openness of the country. The landscape itself is the most honest storyteller: this was land you crossed on horseback, where a raiding party could appear and a pursuit could carry a man to his death miles from help. The distances explain the danger.
Remember that Anglin was buried on the spot where he fell — so this is not a memorial moved to a convenient roadside, but a place tied to a real event on real ground. That directness gives the site a quiet gravity worth pausing for.
As a stop on a West Texas drive, it rewards a moment of imagination and respect. Read the words his comrades left about his character, look out at the plains, and let the place mark for you the closing of the frontier era — a single grave standing in for the end of an age.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · W. B. Anglin
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Marcy Trail
Midland, TX
In 1849 an Army expedition under Captain Randolph B. Marcy, guided by a Comanche man named Manuel, crossed the dreaded Llano Estacado of West Texas and proved the staked plains could be traveled. The route Marcy plotted from Doña Ana to Fort Smith became a shorter road to the California gold fields, later carried the overland stage, and by 1881 guided the Texas and Pacific Railroad. This marker stands near that pioneering path.
Midland County
Midland, TX
Sitting midway between El Paso and Fort Worth on the Texas and Pacific Railroad, the townsite took the name Midland in 1881, and Midland County was created in 1885. The area had been a crossroads of trails and the site of one of the last Comanche raids into Texas before cattlemen, sheepmen, and windmill-watered farmers moved in. The 1928 Permian Basin discovery made Midland an oil headquarters, and in 1954 the ancient "Midland Man" remains were found nearby.
Comanche War Trail
Odessa, TX
In the 18th century the Comanches swept onto the southern plains, driving the Wichitas eastward and the Apaches west to become the dominant power of the region. From this heartland they raided across a vast frontier — from Corpus Christi and the Red River deep into Mexico — and the many routes of their raids converged into the great Comanche War Trail, which passed some 20 miles southeast of this marker. It was a corridor of both commerce and conflict for generations.
Old Buffalo Wallow
Odessa, TX
This shallow depression is a surviving buffalo wallow, worn into the West Texas ground over untold years by bison rolling in the dirt to shed winter coats and drive off insects. Great herds once migrated across these plains between Canada and Mexico, sustaining the Plains Indians who followed them for food, clothing, and shelter. In the 1870s the herds were slaughtered en masse—encouraged by the army, settlers, and hide hunters—and had all but vanished by the time Odessa was founded in 1886.