Mobeetie Texas - Mother City of the Texas Panhandle

Mobeetie, Texas - Panhandle Mother City

Fort Elliott Site Today

Site of Fort Elliot Today

William (Billy) L.R. Dixon

William (Billy) L. R. Dixon, hero of the Battle of Adobe Walls in 1874, was wagon master of a bull train in Sweetwater for a time. Running the train for Lee Reynolds of Dodge City, Kansas, Dixon mastered ten 7-oxen teams of three wagons to a team bringing provisions into Sweetwater and taking loads of buffalo hides back to Dodge City.

By February 21, 1876, the fort was renamed Fort Elliott by General Order No. 3 of the Division of the Missouri. By that time, Fort Elliott had officer’s quarters, sufficient barracks for six companies of enlisted men, a headquarters building, hospital, laundresses’ quarters, storehouses and cavalry stables all built of lumber.

Most of the supplies that were needed for the Fort were brought in from Dodge City, Kansas. Civilians who settled near the post produced food for which they found a ready market at the post.

On April 12, 1876 Wheeler County was one of twenty-six counties created out of Clay County Territory and was named for Supreme Court Justice Royal T. Wheeler.

In 1878, it was discovered that Sweetwater was located on the Military Reserve and the town had to relocate. Moving two miles northwest to section 45, this proved to be a boost for the settlement, with its location nearer to the fort.

Wheeler County was officially organized in 1879 by a petition signed by 150 qualified voters and Sweetwater was elected as the county seat. The settlement then applied for its own post office with the town name of Sweetwater. However, the name was rejected because Texas already had a town by that name. It occurred to some to ask the local Indians the name of Sweetwater as spoken in their language. The word was Mobeetie and it became the name of the town. It wasn’t until many years later that a Comanche related that Mobeetie didn’t actually mean “sweet water,” but instead, meant “buffalo dung.”

By 1880, Fort Elliott was able to procure from the locals, hay, some lumber, shoes, saddles, wagon wheels, clothing and many staple foods. These early entrepreneurs constituted the first manufacturing in the Texas Panhandle.

Throughout the 1880s Mobeetie was the commercial center of much of the Panhandle, connected by a mail route with Tascosa, to the west. Rath’s mercantile store catered to area ranches and Fort Elliott dominated the economy. Mobeetie's main street expanded to include livery stables, wagon yards, a barbershop, drugstore, blacksmith shop, two hotels, numerous boarding houses, and an increased number of the ever present saloons.

The first courthouse in the Texas Panhandle was built in Mobeetie in 1880 by Irish stone masons who quarried the stone from the Emanuel Dubbs homestead nine miles east of Mobeetie. Just one year later Mobeetie became the judicial center of the Thirty-fifth District, which comprised fifteen counties. Several lawyers set up shop, including Temple Houston,son of Sam Houston, who served a term in Mobeetie as district attorney before his election to the state Senate.

Mobeetie continued to have its share of gamblers, rustlers, and prostitutes. However, Captain George W. Arrington and his Texas Ranger Company proved an effective deterrent to the lawless element. Arrington was elected county sheriff in 1882 and throughout his term made his home in the two-story stone jail, which still stands today. In the same year the Texas Panhandle, the region's first newspaper, began operation. By 1886 Mobeetie had a population of about 300.

Continued Next Page

Old Mobeetie Stone Courthouse

Old Mobeetie Courthouse courtesy

Old Mobeetie Texas Association

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