Named after Captain William Mosby Eastland, who died in the Texas revolution, Eastland county covers about 952 miles of rolling grassland and red dirt. After getting off to a slow start, the county saw an influx of new residents after the construction of the Texas and Pacific and the Texas Central railroads in 1881. Cotton farming caught on as the area’s primary industry, and almost 3,000 farms were producing it by the turn of the century. A combination of boll weevils and drought effectively ended the cotton boom by the early 1900s.

In the midst of a severe drought in 1917, residents of Ranger pleaded with William Knox Gordon, vice president of the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company, to begin testing the area for oil. The single most important event in the area’s history happened on a cool morning in October of 1917, when the McClesky #1 oil well came in. Producing 1,700 barrels of oil a day, the well sparked massive production, and brought much-needed money into the area. By 1919, stock of the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company was trading at $1,250 a share, and the company was operating 22 wells in the area. Drawn by the lure of “black gold” and the money that came with it, as many as 30,000 people invaded Ranger hoping to strike it rich. Conrad Hilton started his hotel empire by buying the two-story Mobley hotel in downtown Cisco because it was reportedly the only way he could get a place to sleep.

Not all of the oil boom’s effects were positive, however. After oil was discovered, the drought finally ended, and torrents of rain turned Main Street into a bog three feet deep. Oil wells built in Ranger put the town at risk when they came in and caught fire. Influenza and typhoid spread through the crowded housing, killing many. And the oil workers got so rowdy that the famous Si Bradford had to be recruited from the nearby town of Strawn to be the sheriff.

In 1921, the oil dried up. After massive overproduction, the reservoirs of oil in black lime under the earth became exhausted, and the party was over. Tent cities folded up, oil derricks were dismantled, and the fortune-seekers went home. Banks went under, taking the remaining residents’ fortunes with them as the Great Depression hit.

The depression is credited as the event that prompted Marshall Ratliff to dress up as Santa Claus and rob the 1st National Bank of Cisco on December 23, 1927. Killing Cisco Chief of Police G.E. Bedford and another officer during the heist, he was caught and imprisoned. Faking insanity, he was able to slip out of his cell, overcome his jailer, and make a run for it. He was unsuccessful in his escape, and Uncle Tom Jones, the jailer, was mortally wounded during the attempt. Outraged at the loss of their favorite lawmen, the citizens of Cisco organized the next day, dragged the nude Ratliff out of his cell, and strung him up from a nearby utility pole. An engraved marble slab marks the street corner in Eastland where Ratliff died, victim of the last recorded mob lynching in Texas.

By 1931, the Eastland county courthouse had fallen into such a state of disrepair that it had to be torn down. Recalling that a horned toad and a bottle of whiskey had been sealed inside the cornerstone in 1897 when the building was constructed, eager townsfolk gathered around the structure to see what was left. E.E. Wood reached into the cornerstone in front of several hundred witnesses and pulled the horned toad out by the tail. His leg twitched, and his seemingly lifeless body inflated with fresh air for the first time in 31 years. The crowd went wild. “Ol’ Rip” went on a nationwide tour, eventually even meeting President Coolidge. After catching pneumonia and dying about a year later, Ol’ Rip was embalmed and placed in a miniature casket with a glass lid, which lies to this day in the North window of the new Eastland county courthouse.

When people started leaving the county in the 1920s, they didn’t ever stop. At the height of the boom, the 1920 census recorded 58,508 residents – but by 1950 only 23,942 remained. It was at this point that B.D. “Bud” Linney moved from Abilene to Rising Star to work as a roughneck on one of the few remaining oil wells. After toiling for several years, he met Jo Ann in 1956. They married a year later, and settled down on some family land and a house with no running water about 5 miles north of Rising Star. Despite vowing as a child that she would never marry a farmer, Jo Ann helped Bud raise peanuts, an increasingly popular crop, on their land.

Just as before, the work was not easy. Looking back from the comfort of an easy chair, Bud would later smile and say, “We’ve kind of scratched shit with the chickens in our life.” But the land remained fertile, and the crops proved profitable over the years. Bud and Jo Ann would eventually go on to raise several children, who still live nearby. Today, he owns several hundred acres of very fertile farmland, which he grazes cattle on.

According to Bud, the nearby town of Rising Star used to be a bustling city. The Missouri, Kansas, and Texas railroad operated a line from Cross Plains to Deleon that brought economic growth to the town until 1949, when it was torn up. While Rising Star used to be large enough to support 5 car dealerships, only 859 people remain today.

The same holds true for the rest of the county. Those lucky enough to own their own farms are able to support themselves through economic hard times, while those who rely on industry are more likely to be forced to leave. By 1996, only 17,926 people remained, with an average income per capita of $16,260.

Not much is left of Rising Star, or Desdemona, or Ranger, or Carbon, or Pioneer, or many of the other towns that met fame and fortune for a few brief years during the 1920s. Walking down the streets of Eastland, Cisco, and Ranger, the contrast of the old, multi-story brick buildings that now lie empty on the main thoroughfares seems a bit odd. But as I walk into the drugstore and listen to grey-haired men sip coffee and talk about days gone by, I can't escape the desire to stay for a while, and imagine the days of cotton farming, Santa Claus robbers, and Black Gold.