Wilbarger County
Vernon, Wilbarger County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Formed from Bexar County. Created February 1, 1858. Organized October 10, 1881. Named for Josiah and Mathias Wilbarger, brothers who came to Texas in 1829. Josiah, scalped by Indians August, 1833, survived 11 years. Vernon, the county seat. Millions of cattle and horses were driven north through this county.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Carved from Bexar County in 1858 and organized in 1881, this county honors the Wilbarger brothers, who came to Texas in 1829 during its earliest Anglo-American settlement. Josiah Wilbarger's survival for eleven years after being scalped in 1833 became one of the frontier's most famous tales. In its cattle-driving heyday, millions of head of livestock passed north through the county on the great trail drives.
Why it matters
Wilbarger County captures the collision and coexistence of settlers, Native peoples, and the cattle economy that defined the Texas frontier and fed a nation's westward expansion.
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Related people
- · Josiah Wilbarger
- · Mathias Wilbarger
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Red River Valley Museum
Vernon, TX
The Red River Valley Museum holds one of Texas' notable regional collections of Indian artifacts, tracing the long human presence along the Red River. Before the great Chisholm Trail cattle herds crossed at nearby Doan's Crossing, this was the country of the Comanche, Kiowa, and Wichita peoples. Mr. and Mrs. J. Henry Ray of Vernon spent thirty years assembling the collection, which they donated to Wilbarger County in 1963.
Early Wilbarger County
Vernon, TX
Organized in 1858 on the rolling plains of North Texas, Wilbarger County took its name from early settlers, including surveyor Josiah Wilbarger, famous for surviving a scalping. The land here was frontier in the fullest sense: the Doan brothers' adobe house marked the Red River crossing of the Western Cattle Trail, where great herds forded on their way north. The county seat of Vernon, once called Eagle Flat, gained a railroad in 1886 as the open range gave way to towns and rails.
Jonathan Doan
Vernon, TX
A Quaker trader known for keeping peace on a violent frontier, Jonathan Doan came from Ohio into the hides trade of Indian Territory in the mid-1870s. In 1878 he opened a trading post at the Western Cattle Trail's Red River crossing — the famous Doan's Store — soon run by his nephew C. F. Doan. Respected by Indians, cattlemen, and frontiersmen alike, the Doans became fixtures of the great trail-driving era.
Medicine Mound Community
Medicine Mound, TX
The area's earliest inhabitants were Comanche and Kiowa people who camped around four dolomite hills—the Medicine Mounds—prized for their healing properties. After the land was deeded to a railway in 1854 and Anglo settlers arrived in the 1870s, a small village grew, then relocated 2.5 miles north in 1908 when the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway came through. At its peak Medicine Mound held 22 businesses and 500 people, but the Depression and a 1933 fire that burned the whole town drove its decline, and the last business closed in 1966.