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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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