Wentworth
Sonora, Sutton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Situated in 1880's at water well of A. J. Winkler, who platted townsite, gave title bond, and named place for Fort Terrett area rancher P. H. Wentworth. The residents occupied tents and picket homes. Principal building was two-story school, church, and hall of Dee Ora Lodge No. 715, A.F. & A.M. Town had a post office Aug. 1890 - Aug. 1891. Postmaster was Thomas Stevenson, uncle of a future Texas governor. Losing 1891 county seat election to Sonora, Wentworth citizens moved away. Lodge hall, relocated late 1891 in Sonora, served as school and community building until 1938.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Wentworth sprang up in the 1880s around A. J. Winkler's water well, named for a Fort Terrett-area rancher. Its residents lived in tents and picket homes, and its grandest building was a two-story structure that doubled as school, church, and Masonic lodge hall. When the town lost the 1891 county-seat election to Sonora, its people simply moved away, and the lodge hall was relocated to Sonora—leaving Wentworth to vanish from the map.
Why it matters
Wentworth is a classic Western ghost town, its rise and sudden abandonment showing how a single county-seat vote could make or unmake a frontier settlement.
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Related people
- · A. J. Winkler
- · P. H. Wentworth
- · Thomas Stevenson
Related events
- · 1891 Sutton County seat election
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Sonora Town Well
Sonora, TX
In the arid ranchlands of Sutton County, water was the difference between a settlement and empty grass. In 1889 Charlie Adams used a horse-driven drill to sink Sonora's first well at this spot, where a windmill lifted water into a storage tank and the courthouse square soon took shape. Newer wells followed in the 1890s, and by 1895 the original waterworks had been bought up and carried away.
The Frisco Trailway
Sonora, TX
The Frisco Trailway was a 100-mile 'Market Lane' used from 1900 to 1930 to drive cattle across Sutton County toward the railhead at Brady. Built by railway agent E. F. Tillman, the fenced corridor ran a generous 250 feet wide and offered watered holdover traps every ten to fifteen miles, moving herds by way of Fort McKavett and Menard. It was a vital artery in the county's early ranching economy.
Sutton County Courthouse
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The site of the Sutton County Courthouse began as something more elemental than government: the first water well in the area, where sheepmen brought their flocks to drink and decided to settle. That same scarce water bred violence — a deadly quarrel over watering rights left one West Texas family patriarch dead on the very ground where the courthouse would rise. The story compresses the ranching frontier's hard bargains into a single contested spot.
Sutton County Jail
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Soon after Sutton County organized in 1890, its commissioners hired a St. Louis firm to erect this jail, completed in September 1891 as a two-story native-stone building that combined cells with a jailer's residence. Its first inmate was gambler and gunman John Denson, a cousin of the notorious outlaw John Wesley Hardin — a fitting christening for a frontier lockup. The sturdy stone structure embodies the arrival of formal law in a raw ranching county.