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ROCKLEDGE,
TEXAS
A Panhandle Ghost Community by
Delbert Trew
Donley County
Located six miles west of Alanreed,
Texas 1-40 Exit 132
Take service road west to County Road 19 - ½ mile south
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History in a Pecan
Shell
Rockledge was named for the land survey known as Rockwall
School Land and because of the many steep rocky walls of nearby canyons. First
established as a side track for the Rock Island Railroad because it was
the only area of level land available on the track right-of-way. The surrounding
grasslands were parts of the Red River Cattle company of Texas and the
famous Quarter Circle Heart Ranch swindled into bankruptcy by Carhart and
Sully in the early 1900s.
The site lay only one-hundred yards inside the
north line of Donley County and alongside the railroad track with a county dirt
road running alongside the track. A two-room clapboard house sat to the west where
the railroad section foreman lived. It was served by a cistern filled from a water
tank car on the railroad. A cross-tie storage shed, sporting a dirt roof, stood
nearby to store railroad supplies.
In about 1905, two murders happened
within seconds when a real estate agent from Amarillo
met with a local rancher and his son at Rockledge to discuss a financial problem.
The man from Amarillo stepped off the train and waited for the rancher to arrive
in a buggy. The local section foreman and his tie crew were working nearby.
They
two parties met, argued and the Amarillo man drew a pistol, shot the rancher and
began running toward the railroad work crew. As the rancher fell he ordered his
son to shoot the running man. The son pulled a rifle from the buggy and killed
the running man. Both murders were witnessed by the work crew which loaded the
bodies on the next train going east.
In 1926, a 10-inch petroleum pipe
line was installed from the northern Panhandle to south Texas with a booster camp
built by the sidetrack at Rockledge. A huge pump station, two large storage tanks
and six homes were constructed on the site. Later the engineers discovered it
was downhill from Rockledge going south with gravity doing most of the work. Three
of the homes and half of the pumping capacity was moved farther down the line.
In June of 1939, after Route 66
was paved just to the north of Rockledge, two young boys robbed the bank in Alanreed,
took 3,000 and fled west along Route 66 toward Amarillo. Just north of Rockledge
their car engine failed and the bandits fled into the nearby Rockwell Canyons.
A posse surrounded the canyons, capturing the boys in only three hours. Mysteriously,
only 1,500 was recovered. No one knows where the remainder of the loot disappeared.
Three
families lived at Rockledge until the mid-1980s when automated controls were installed
on the pumping equipment. Today, another pipeline has been added to the original,
one tank has been removed and a police radio tower marks the site. Only foundations
and dead trees mark the location of this ghost community. It is on private property.
© Delbert Trew |
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