Will Rogers
Higgins, Lipscomb County, Texas
Marker Inscription
One of America's best loved humorists, whose stage act, gently mocking man's foibles, was highlighted by rope tricks learned here in his youth. Born in Oklahoma. In 1898, threatened with discipline for pranks, he left school and came to Texas. He became a cowboy on the Little Robe Ranch near Higgins and made a lifelong friend of young Frank Ewing, son of his employer. In 1902 he joined a wild west show; was famous by 1918. Rogers died in a crash during a globe-circling pioneer flight with aviator Wiley Post, 1935. (1967)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
One of America's most beloved humorists first sharpened the rope tricks that made him famous as a young cowboy on the Little Robe Ranch near Higgins. Will Rogers had left school in 1898 after some pranks and drifted into Texas, forming a lifelong friendship with his employer's son before joining a wild west show in 1902 and rising to national fame. His life ended in 1935 in a plane crash alongside aviator Wiley Post during a pioneering flight around the globe.
Why it matters
The marker roots a national icon in the ranch country where his cowboy skills — and the plainspoken humor that made him America's conscience — were born.
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Related people
- · Will Rogers
- · Wiley Post
- · Frank Ewing
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Higgins Cemetery
Higgins, TX
Higgins was platted in 1887 by E. C. Gray and the Patton brothers, who had bought land betting the Santa Fe Railroad would build through it—and it did, growing the town into a farming, ranching, and oil community named for a railroad stockholder. Gray deeded its cemetery in 1900, though burials had begun earlier, the oldest marked graves those of two children who died in 1889. Among the interred are a pioneer dentist-sheriff, early friends of humorist Will Rogers, and the forty-five townspeople killed when a tornado destroyed much of Higgins on April 9, 1947.
Lipscomb County
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Carved from Young and Bexar territories, Lipscomb County was created in 1876 and organized in 1887 as settlement pushed into the northeastern Texas Panhandle. It honors Abner S. Lipscomb (1789–1856), a jurist and statesman who served as secretary of state in President Lamar's cabinet, sat in the 1845 Constitutional Convention, and became an associate justice of the first Supreme Court of Texas.
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The Texas Legislature created Lipscomb County in 1876 for the early statesman Abner Lipscomb, and about a decade later J. W. Arthur built a sod-and-wood store and post office that gave the county seat its name. The community formally established its cemetery by 1887, when the infant Fred Mehlhop was buried in its first marked grave, though older unmarked burials may lie nearby. County judges, officials, teachers, ranchers, and farmers rest here, a tie to the settlers who first developed the northeastern Panhandle.