W. G. Byrd Arrives in 1878 - Coke County, TX Contributed by Jo Collier 23 May 2007 Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/copyright.htm http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/tx/txfiles.htm *********************************************************************** The Observer/Enterprise - Robert Lee, Coke County, TX - July 21, 1989 Byrd Arrives in 1878 Coming from Gonzales county with his father, Jim Byrd, they drove 150 head of cattle to this range. W. G. Byrd landed in Coke County November 29, 1878 and a month later saw his first New Year's day in a new country. Most of the people he knew here were living in tents and dugouts. The Byrds were on Mess Box Creek for awhile, then moving to the lcation at the pecan mot on Mountain Creek that became their homestead. Most of the settlers coming into the country followed the old trail or road from up toward Ft. Chadbourne, usually stopping to camp at the old Byrd place. When Amariilo was "just at little wild place on the plains", when Billie the Kid had just left his cave at Portales Lake, and when there were no white men or cattle northwest of the Portales country in New Mexico, at fifteen years of age, he took a mount of horses from Colorado City to the Jim Newman headquarters on Salt Lake, by himself. "It was a hard days ride between ranch houses northwest of Colorado those days," said Mr. Byrd. "Sometimes you didn't make it and had to hobble your horses and lay out on the prairie." Permission granted by The Observer/Enterprise for publication in the Coke County TXGenWeb Archives.