Rath City, Texas, was located at the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos River in Stonewall County, courtesy of
Wikipedia.
Rath City, Texas, was a frontier town that was founded in 1876 on the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos River in southern Stonewall County. It was also known as “Reynolds City”. The settlement existed for fewer than five years before becoming a ghost town.
The site was named for Charles C. Rath, who in 1875 opened the Rath, Lee & Reynolds mercantile store. He sold supplies and bought the hides from the buffalo hunters. The settlement grew around the store. Rath had previously owned a store at Adobe Walls, Texas, but left the location along with the buffalo hunters, following Indian attacks in 1874 and 1875.
Also known as Reynolds, Hide Town, Rath, and Rath’s Store, it was established to capitalize on the buffalo trade and was Stonewall County’s first settlement.
Charles Rath.
By 1877, Rath consisted of the store, two saloons, a dance hall, a corral, a restaurant, and a few tents and dugouts. Skins stretched across poles sheltered the hunters. A tower beside the corral was used as a lookout to ward off Indian attacks. On one occasion, there were 1,100,000 hides at his trading post.
In February 1877, after buffalo hunter Marshall Sewell was killed by Native Americans, Rath City became a rallying point for over 500 frontiersmen. A group of 46 men left Rath City in pursuit of a Comanche war party led by Chief Black Horse, in a campaign known as the Buffalo Hunters’ War or Staked Plains War. The men pursued the Comanche to a site north of present-day Lubbock. A battle ensued on March 18, 1877, at Yellow House Canyon, with the outcome being inconclusive. The hunters returned to Rath City, ending one of the last Indian campaigns on the southern plains.
The decline in the buffalo population led to the settlement’s end, and it was abandoned by 1880.
Rath City was 14 miles northwest of Hamlin, Texas. It is marked by a Texas Historical Marker at a rest stop along U.S. Route 83.
Battle of Yellow House Canyon, Texas.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, February 2026.
Also See:
Charles Rath, Buffalo Entrepreneur
Sources:
Historical Marker Database
Texas State Historical Association
Wikipedia – Battle of Yellow Horse Canyon
Wikipedia – Ruth City