Ryan, Oklahoma

Lying on a direct line of travel from the United States to Mexico, California, and points west, the area now Montague County was once a network of trails. One of the first area roads forged by white men was the Chihuahua Traders Trail of 1840. Blazed by merchants hoping to open a trade route from Mexico to St. Louis, Mo., this road crossed present Montague County and left tracks for later travelers. In 1841 came the Texan-Santa Fe Expedition; though it failed to open regular commerce between the Republic of Texas and Northern Mexico, this delegation also left a road and enforced the claims of Texas to Western territories. In 1849 U.S. Army Capt. Randolph B. Marcy charted a "California Trail", using parts of older routes. This soon grew into a thoroughfare for forty-niners and sturdy pioneers who came later. In 1858 the famous Butterfield Overland Mail Line came across the county; and in the 1870's, as Texas was building her image as a cattle empire, Montague County was crossed by two feeder branches of the Chisholm Trail. In 1882, the county's first railroad followed much of the Texan-Santa Fe Trail. Today Highway 82 partly traces Marcy's route and other roads parallel many of these early trails. (1969)

Henry A. Whaley, the first permanent settler in Clay County, was born near Washington in Rhea County, Tennessee, on August 24, 1826. He received little formal education. During the Mexican War he enlisted in the United States Army at Washington, Tennessee, and served in Company H of the First Regiment of the Tennessee Mounted Infantry, commanded by Capt. James W. Gillespie. Whaley saw no combat in the war with Mexico but did serve with the occupation forces at Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, after the capture of the city by the army of Gen. Zachary Taylor . By the time of his honorable discharge, Whaley had attained the rank of sergeant. He returned to Tennessee and became engaged in farming and ranching. On November 29, 1849, he was married to Annanellie Melhellen at Strawberry Plains in Rhea County, Tennessee; the couple had one son. Whaley and his wife did not live together after 1860, though a divorce was apparently never obtained. Whaley moved to Texas in 1860 and settled near Gainesville in Cooke County; there he farmed and ranched. With the outbreak of the Civil War , he enlisted in the frontier defense regiment commanded by Col. James G. Bourland . Serving in Company B of the regiment, Whaley saw combat in several campaigns against the Indians. By the end of the Civil War he held the rank of second lieutenant in the army of the Confederate States of America. In 1869 Whaley settled in northern Clay County, about four miles southeast of the mouth of the Big Wichita River. At that time he was the only White settler in Clay County. Whaley constructed a stockade and hired about a dozen employees to farm, care for livestock, and provide protection against the numerous Indians who frequented the area. He was soon selling several thousand bushels of oats annually. His principal buyer was the United States Army. Although he worked hard on his land for nearly thirty years and made huge amounts of money, he was alone and a virtual pauper during the last years of his life. He lost most of his land because of his weakness for alcoholic beverages. By the end of his life Whaley was subsisting on a pension of eight dollars a month granted on the basis of his service in the Mexican War. He died on December 26, 1898, and was buried in the Benvanue Cemetery, three miles east of Byers in Clay County.

Land given to found school (first in north Clay County) by A. W. and G. W. Byers. First superintendent Edgar Haney, later legislator, promoted first independent school district laws. Rufus Rush, first graduate, later taught President Lyndon B. Johnson. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1967.

Byers is at the intersection of State Highway 79 and Farm Road 171, two miles south of the conjunction of the Red and Wichita rivers, fourteen miles north of Henrietta, and twenty miles northeast of Wichita Falls in northern Clay County. It was founded by two brothers, Anthony Walter and George Washington Byers, who were partners in a general store in Sherman and acquired over 30,000 acres of land in Clay County. There are several versions of how they acquired the land. One is that Mr. Acers, a large landowner in the area, bought barbed wire on credit with his land as collateral, and when he was unable to pay off his debt the land was forfeited to the Byers brothers. The other story is that the Byerses traded their mercantile business in Sherman for the land in Clay County. The real establishment of Byers occurred in 1904, when the Wichita Falls and Oklahoma Railway was completed from Wichita Falls to Byers. The brothers donated $15,000 of the $27,924 raised for the completion of the line. They subdivided their ranch, laid out town lots, and established the Tree Ranch. Because the railroad went three miles west of Benvanue, many of the residents moved their homes and businesses to Byers to have access to the railroad, which was completed through the community in June of 1904. Town lots went on sale on June 10. That year Byers received a post office with A. Harris, the owner of the first store in town, as postmaster. In 1905 Edgar P. Haney established the community's first newspaper, the Byers Searchlight , to promote the community, its school, and the "Searchlight Town Band." By 1906 Byers was a sizable town. Its school had 115 pupils and two teachers, and the town had its first cotton gin. In 1914 the community had a population of 600, the First National Bank, a weekly newspaper named the Byers Herald , several cotton gins, cattle breeders and livestock dealers, and cotton buyers. In addition, a variety of stores included furniture dealers, jewelers, grocery and dry goods establishments, and a blacksmith. The population of Byers remained steady throughout the 1920s, but by the 1930s it began to drop. The town was incorporated by 1940. It had a population of 427 and thirty businesses shortly before World War II . In 1943 the Wichita Falls and Oklahoma Railway was abandoned. By the 1980s twelve businesses remained in Byers. In 1980 and 1990 the population was 510. In 2000 the population was 517. Byers was one of the five school districts in Clay County; in 1990 its school had 136 students.

The Wichita Falls and Oklahoma Railway Company was chartered on October 23, 1903, to build a road twenty miles from Wichita Falls to a point in the northwest corner of Clay County on the south bank of the Red River, near the mouth of Cache Creek. The company had a capital of $50,000, and the business office was located at Wichita Falls. Members of the first board of directors included Joseph Alexander Kemp, Robert E. Huff , A. Newby, O. J. Kendall, O. T. Bacon, G. B. Stone, Frank Aris, William McGregor, and H. M. Durrett, all from Wichita Falls. The Wichita Falls and Oklahoma was the first of a group of feeders that the Colorado and Southern built for the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway. Twenty-two miles of track was built from Wichita Falls to Byers, Texas, and placed in service on June 24, 1904. The road received $28,000 in bonuses, of which the Byers family, for whom the Texas terminal was named, gave $15,000. Construction began in June 1922 on an extension from Byers to a connection with the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific at Waurika, Oklahoma. This extension, built under the charter of the Wichita Falls and Oklahoma Railroad of Oklahoma, was placed in operation March 1, 1923. Both the Texas and the Oklahoma companies were operated by the Wichita Valley Railway under lease. The entire line was abandoned on October 19, 1942, and the track removed the following year.

Pennsylvania oil man George Williams, backed by Cad McCall, drilled for oil intermittently, 1918-22, beginning at Eagle Point (4.5 mi. SE). Leasing by individuals and major companies--including Phil Lesh, A.E. Humphrey, and the Texas Co.--kept rigs working. Gas blew in at 800-foot depth on J.W. Maddox-J.E. Lemons land, one well yielding over 100,000,000 cubic feet daily. The gas was piped to Nocona and rural homes. Oil was discovered in 1922 on Maddox site, at about 1,000 feet. Production continued at 1,000-2,000 feet, there and elsewhere. The gas caused trouble: a capped well blew mud from prairie dog holes and gas from water well a quarter-mile away. In 1925, a gas well on W.W. Jones land (2 mi. W) blew out a gigantic crater. Another well (.75 mi. W) caught fire, burned its rig, and was finally doused by nationally-famed oil well fire fighter Tex Thornton. With an estimated 100,000,000-barrel total on record, this 12,295-acre field still produces. (1972)