History of Old Tascosa

Old Tascosa, the present-day location of Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch, was the second town founded in the Texas Panhandle. Located in Oldham County and situated on the north bank of the Canadian River at a well-known “easy crossing,” Tascosa (or Atascosa as it was first known) was 135 miles west of the only other town, Mobeetie, Texas.

Once known as the “Cowboy Capital of the Panhandle”, Old Tascosa boasts a history as rich and varied as the land on which it was built. Among the first settlers at the site was the Spaniard sheepherder Casimiro Romero, now buried in the Romero family cemetery on the LIT Ranch just east of Boys Ranch.

Assigned a post office in 1878, the small town grew as a trade, trail and cattle center. Soon, both a cattle trail and mail line developed between Tascosa and Dodge City. Large open-range ranches such as the LIT, LS, XIT and Frying Pan looked to Tascosa as their hub. In 1880, Oldham County was organized with Tascosa as the County seat. The original two-story stone courthouse now serves as the Julian Bivens Museum on the campus of Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch.

Tascosa’s colorful history includes legends of Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, Bat Masterson and Frenchy McCormick. The first known “cowboy strike” ended in gunfire, with some of the participants buried at Boot Hill Cemetery, so named because many of the men died with their boots on. Located on a hill overlooking Boys Ranch, the famous cemetery is open to visitors.

The story of mystery woman Frenchy McCormick, a dance hall girl and the last resident of Tascosa, is a legend in itself. Only her husband Mickey ever knew her true identity and the secrets of her past. Though she buried Mickey in the Romero Cemetery in 1912, Frenchy remained long after Tascosa became a ghost town. She vowed never to leave Mickey and Tascosa, and remained alone in their adobe home for 27 years until January, 1939, when she moved into the home of a friend in Channing, Texas. She died two years later and was buried beside her beloved “Mack” in the Romero Cemetery. Some of her belongings are displayed in the Julian Bivens Museum.

Shortly after Frenchy McCormick left in 1939, Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch was founded on the site of Tascosa, bringing life back to the old town. The stone courthouse donated by rancher Julian Bivens served as home for the first nine boys. After Mrs. McCormick’s death, the boys sang Home on the Range as they lowered her to rest. Later, Boys Ranch alumni raised money to erect a marble headstone for the last resident of Old Tascosa.

Description of Old Tascosa
“A Shirttail to Hang Onto”
by Beth Day

“Once the hub of activity in the Panhandle, it was the only source of supplies for buffalo hunters and cattle drivers within a two-hundred-mile radius. Tascosa had been a thriving, brawling oasis in the plains until it was bypassed by railroads and it gradually died. Floods and windstorms had battered down the adobe houses and washed out the once-busy dirt streets. The stone Court House was set in a shady grove of giant cottonwoods. It, and a scattering of crumbling adobe buildings, was all that was left of the once-thriving town. As it had died, its citizens had moved on, leaving Tascosa to the coyotes, the rattlesnakes, and the whispering plains winds. All had left but Frenchy McCormick, its last living inhabitant. A former dance hall girl from New Orleans, Frenchy had sworn she would never leave the spot where her lover-husband, Irish gambler Micky McCormick, was buried. When the Bivins ranch took over the site of the town, the Bivins family left the widowed old woman undisturbed in her tiny house. But they did convert the abandoned Court House into a ranch home, by adding a front porch and a back wing for cooking and dining. The upstairs offices were converted into bedrooms. An old cowboy and his wife lived there the year around as caretakers.”