Ozona, Texas

Was born in Tennessee on August 17, 1786 Participated in the Creek Indian Campaign 1813-1814 Member of the Tennessee House of Representatives 1821-1823. United States Congressman from Tennessee 1827-1831 and 1833-1835 Arrived in Texas in January 1836 Died a hero at the Alamo March the Sixth 1836. .. Be sure you are right - then go ahead ..

Charles E. Davidson, lawyer, rancher, and county judge, was born on July 10, 1856, in Nicholas County, Kentucky, and spent his childhood on a farm in Iowa. After attending Cornell University and the University of Iowa, he received his law degree in 1882 from the Hastings School of Law, San Francisco, and went to work for a San Francisco law firm that dealt in Texas land and land scrip. His first case yielded him a fee of twenty-five sections of land in West Texas. He moved to Texas immediately and, with his brother Glen, opened a land and law office in San Angelo in 1883. The young lawyer and surveyor soon branched out into the cattle business and in 1891 moved to Ozona. That section of the state was then a part of Bexar County, but under Davidson's leadership the separate Crockett County was organized. Davidson was elected the first county judge and county school superintendent on July 7, 1891. His tenure as county judge is probably unparalleled in the United States: during his fifty-one years on the bench he never sought reelection. In 1893 Judge Davidson married Dixie R. Friend; they reared seven children. Davidson briefly published the Ozona Stockman . He successfully combined the career of county judge with that of lawyer, rancher, surveyor, educator, publisher, businessman, and philosopher. His long service in behalf of his community earned him the nickname "Godfather of Crockett County." He was a Methodist and a Mason. Davidson died at his ranch home near Ozona on July 25, 1944.

Crockett County is located in southwestern Texas on the western edge of the Edwards Plateau . It is bounded on the west by the Pecos River, which separates it from Terrell and Pecos counties. Its northern border is formed by Crane, Upton, Reagan, and Irion counties, while Schleicher and Sutton counties border it on the east and Val Verde County on the south. Ozona, the county seat and only town, is located eighty-two miles southwest of San Angelo. The center point of the county is at 30°41' north latitude and 101°21' west longitude. Crockett County comprises 2,806 square miles. The terrain consists of deep, narrow, steep-walled canyons and flat mesas in the southern and western areas. Broad valleys and flat divides characterize the northern part. The northeastern part is a large flat divide separating the Colorado River and Rio Grande basins. The surface geology is Cretaceous. The soils are dark, calcareous, stony clays and clay loams. The western half of the county is desert shrub savanna, and the eastern half is juniper, oak, and mesquite savanna. Altitudes vary from 1,500 feet above sea level in the southwest to 2,800 feet above sea level in the northwest. Temperatures vary from an average low of 32° F in January to an average high of 96° in July. The average rainfall is eighteen inches per year. The growing season extends across 233 days. Numerous draws, dry most of the year, drain the county during floods and empty into the Devils and Pecos rivers. Johnsons Run and Howard Draw bisect the central area before reaching the Devils and the Pecos, respectively, in Val Verde County. Live Oak Creek runs to the south from the northwest and enters the Pecos at Lancaster Hill. The dry bed of Spring Creek originates in the northeastern corner of the county and extends northeast to the Middle Concho River. Early important sources of water for prehistoric people and early travelers were Live Oak Spring and Cedar Springs, which once provided strong flows in western Crockett County. Among the first people to take water from the springs were the early inhabitants of Gobbler Shelter, located on a small tributary canyon of Live Oak Creek. Prehistoric people lived over long periods of time in the shelter, where they left artifacts. Spaniards first passed through the area of Crockett County in 1590, when Gaspar Castaño de Sosa brought the first Europeans through the isolated canyonland. Castaño led a mining expedition from Monclova, Chihuahua, to the northern New Mexico pueblo of Santo Domingo. His party of 170 men, women, and children is thought to have traveled up Johnsons Run and crossed the western section of the future Crockett County to reach the Pecos River. On May 22, 1684, Juan Domínguez de Mendoza and his expedition crossed the Pecos River and camped at a site Domínguez called San Pantaleón now in Crockett County. At that time several Indian tribes lived in the area, among them Lipan Apaches and Tonkawas. Comanches drifted into the area during the eighteenth century, displacing earlier inhabitants. John Coffee Hays led an expedition through the county in 1849, charting waterholes for a freighting and stagecoach route from San Antonio to El Paso. In 1852 Col. Joseph Mansfield of the United States Army inspected the road from El Paso to San Antonio. After determining that travelers along the route needed more military protection against Indian attacks, he recommended establishing a new post on Live Oak Creek just above its juncture with the Pecos River. In response to Mansfield's recommendation, Fort Lancaster was founded on the east bank of Live Oak Creek August 20, 1855. When Texas seceded from the Union less than six years later, the fort was abandoned. A small Confederate unit held it for a short time, but soon left it. After the war the former fort was used only as a subpost. After 1874 it fell into complete decay. Following the Civil War , Anglo-Americans moved into the frontier region and took up the unoccupied

William Peery Hoover, early rancher and settler of Crockett County, one of five children of Henry Fox and Mary Alice (Peery) Hoover, was born in Hamilton County, Texas, on April 25, 1854. His parents had moved to the county in 1850. When Hoover was a young man, he and his brother Henry established a ranching operation on Cow House Creek in Hamilton County. On January 7, 1878, Hoover married Laura Carolyn McNutt, daughter of Jim McNutt of Tennessee; they had fourteen children. A few years after the marriage, the couple moved to unsettled land in West Texas. They gathered their cattle and drove them over trackless terrain to Beaver Lake in Val Verde County, where they found water for the livestock. They settled east of the Pecos River in Crockett County, and Hoover built the first house in that county in 1881. It was built in a large oak grove from cedar pickets, mud, and grass. Hoover leased land along the Pecos River from the railroad for five cents an acre. Through purchasing land from the railroad and homesteading, he acquired a 157-section ranch. Hoover was one of the founders of Ozona. He was a Mason. He died on June 4, 1922.

A native of Illinois, E. M. Powell was a surveyor and railroad engineer in Kentucky before moving to Texas in 1874. He worked as a surveyor during the railroad construction boom in Texas in the 1870s, taking parcels of land in payment for his services. By 1878 Powell and a partner, E. L. Gage, opened a real estate and land surveying company in Dallas. Powell soon began promoting his land holdings in West Texas and placed newspaper advertisements to encourage settlement in this area. To the first families who purchased homesteads out of his 185,000-acre tract of land in present Crockett County, he offered forty acres of free land as well as reduced prices for additional acreage. The city of Ozona was founded on Powell's property. He provided a public well and windmill, as well as lots for public buildings, churches, and a school. As a result of his settlement efforts, the county of Crockett was organized in 1891 with Ozona as the county seat. Married to the former Mary Almyra Durrell, Powell was the father of one son, Durrell, who died at age seven. Powell was a major contributor to the Dallas Congregational Church and to other charities. (1991)

Site 33 miles west on US 90. Upon US surrender Texas Forts start of Civil War, made part Confederate far western frontier line. Occupied by 2nd Texas cavalry. On supply line to and from Arizona-New Mexico Campaign 1861-62, intended to make Confederacy an ocean to ocean nation. When regular patrols to guard supply trains and check Indian activities grew dull, life spiced by camp newspaper and nightly sport of shooting pesky coyotes. A memorial to Texans who served the Confederacy Erected by the State of Texas 1963