Lt. Homer Wheeler and Company A Cheyenne Scouts, Ft. Elliott, Texas 1889
LIFE AFTER THE CALVARY
Billy builds a home and finds a Bride.
And becomes a Hero.
In the winter of 1874-1875 Billy Dixon was with General Miles’ command when Miles decided to station a portion of his Command at a Cantonment that was being established along the Sweetwater Creek in what soon became Wheeler County, Texas. Up on the Plains, overlooking a beautiful stretch of fresh running spring water and cottonwood tree cover, the site would soon become Fort Elliott. Miles left the Command in charge of Major James Biddle, and Billy remained as a scout. In June of 1875, Maj. Biddle and his men were replaced by Maj. H.C. Bankhead and 263 men. Soon, construction was started, with local cottonwood pickets and adobe for the corrals and lumber freighted in from Dodge City.
The Calvary at Fort Elliott, 1879. This original flagpole has been moved and restored and now sits on the beautiful grounds of the Old Mobeetie Jail
Billy Dixon spent eight years at this post, the longest he had ever stayed in one place since he left home at thirteen. On February 10th, 1883, Billy’s position as Scout and Guide at Fort Elliott was terminated. The Fort would close permanently in 1890.
“I was the last Scout to be relieved of duty at that post” Billy remembered with pride.
Now, the buffalo were gone, the last commercial hunting was in 1878. There was scant chance of attack by hostiles, and cattle ranching was in full swing. Fort Elliott was located in Wheeler County, which was formed in 1876 and organized in 1879. From the first cold winter at the Cantonment in 1875, to the start of building the Fort the next June, commerce and trade began changing the landscape of the open Prairie and Plains that was the Panhandle of Texas. Railroad tracks ran to and from many of the nearby towns. Noisy steam locomotives arriving loaded with goods and people. And leaving with cattle bound for the markets in Kansas. Wagon ruts now crisscrossed the buffalo grass. English and Scottish bankers and investors were buying up every available acre, and forming syndicates to operate huge cattle ranches, or to sell outright to settlers and farmers who willingly put the steel plow to virgin buffalo grass. And with people and cattle came towns, houses, businesses, streets, and an attempt at orderly civilization.
One can’t help but wonder about the day Billy Dixon saddled up and rode away from Fort Elliott. Did he pause, and turn in his saddle to look back, seeing his past fade away? Did he know that he was part of an era of history unlike any before and that would never be lived again? As he rode forward across the rolling Plains could he see the future he’d helped to form?
Billy was now thirty three years old and used to being settled into a routine at the Army post, in search of a place to call home He was no longer a nomad searching for adventure. He wanted a comfortable place . He went back to the Canadian River and went to work for one of the big cattle outfits known as the Turkey Track Ranch. While there, he filed a claim on two sections of land, taking in the site of the original Adobe Walls. Billy was now ready to have his own home and make a life for himself.
“I filed on two sections of land on Bent Creek, taking in the site of the original Adobe Walls ruins. I built my house right at the west edge of the old sod building which by that time stock had rubbed to the ground. In the front yard….when the south wind swept the dirt clear, could still be seen the foundations of the old ruins.”
Billy worked diligently to make his place beautiful and functional. He re routed the creek to provide irrigation for a field of alfalfa and to provide water to an orchard of over 200 trees. He planted cottonwood trees for shade in the front yard. He built a small check dam on the creek to cause a small lake to form, full of catfish and perch and where waterfowl abounded.
Billy’s original cabin, at left, was fourteen feet square “Mine was a happy life in my cabin at Adobe Walls, without fret or worry, and with abundance of everything for my simple needs,” he said. “It was the land of my boyhood dreams, and I was satisfied.”
Billy eventually opened a small store in his house, stocking things that would appeal to the passing cowboys, who purchased “more candy and chewing gum than tobacco” he remembered. Later, the District Attorney offered to make Billy a Postmaster, with the Turkey Track Ranch headquarters as post office. That started in August of 1887, when Dixon got his official commission, which was worded “Billy Dickinson”. Soon the post office was moved from the ranch to Dixon’s cabin. His official postal commission reads “William M. Dixon”. He held that commission until September 10th, 1901.
A letter from 1919 bearing the Adobe Walls postmark
Now that the cabin was serving as a store and a post office, Billy, not one to be idle, added a lean-to onto the west side to serve as his bedroom. He also became a Justice of the Peace for three adjoining counties, which was a large geographical area. Later he also became a Land Commissioner. Industrious as ever, he continued adding rooms to the cabin, until he had put together one of the most spacious homes in the entire Panhandle.
Billy lived here as a bachelor until 1894, when he married Miss Olive King, a lovely young lady who had traveled from Decatur, Alabama-eleven hundred miles by train- to visit her brothers Albert and Archie King, who were cowboys on the Bar CC ranch. Olive quickly fell in love with the Panhandle. Not wanting to leave the Panhandle, she took a job teaching five school age children in a twelve by twelve cottonwood log school room. The salary was meager, but it would allow her to remain in Texas. She move into the home of a Portuguese family named Lewis, to assist Mrs. Lewis in learning English. Mrs. Lewis enjoyed have another lady around, and soon was up to matchmaking. After Olive’s first season of teaching, Mrs. Lewis introduced her to the handsome, but awkward and shy around women, Billy Dixon, through seemingly ‘chance’ encounters of Billy stopping by the Lewis home.
Several days after asking Olive for her hand in marriage, her brother Archie came to collect his mail at the Dixon Post Office. Archie remembered that the usually taciturn Billy was “sweating and spitting” as he nervously told Archie of the engagement, chuckling “The most words in a string that I ever heard that man say!”
Olive and Billy were married October 18th, 1894 at the Lewis home on Reynolds Creek. Mrs. Lewis prepared a wonderful celebration for the couple, and even the rarest thing on the Prairie-a Methodist Preacher- was there. Billy and the Preacher were both late for the ceremony, because of Billy taking time to tour the Preacher around his farm and the old Adobe Wall battle areas.
The couple had five of their seven children here, all born in the home. One child died shortly after birth. When Olive’s mother couldn’t travel from Virginia for the first child, a local mid-wife was recruited to help. As their family grew so did their ranch and cattle herd. And so did the neighboring Turkey Track Ranch, buying additional properties as they became available. In 1903 the Kansas partnership of Price, Patten and Hyde purchased all of the Turkey Track Ranch, and made Billy an offer he couldn’t refuse. Billy put it very succinctly:
“When Patten, Price and Hyde, the Kansas cattlemen, bought the Turkey Track range and stock, I sold my place at Adobe Walls to them”
The winter of 1903-1904 was one of the worst ever, with snows totaling over two feet. Cattle losses were heavy throughout the region and the Dixon’s weren’t spared. Operating on borrowed money, the Dixon’s gained substantial debt. Billy had also begun construction of a new two story home, freighting in lumber from nearby Channing. The sale of the ranch allowed them to clear out their debt. Olive wasn’t leaving without her new home, so it was jacked up and moved fourteen miles to the new town of Plemons.
There were other advantages to moving to Plemons. Dixon’s children were starting school, with one already at the the primitive school, and Olive was hoping to see the rest of her children at a stronger school to begin their education. Also, the two story house they had moved from the ranch had two bedrooms upstairs, which the Dixon’s rented out, boarding house style. Olive said of Billy “He cut up the meat, helped with the cooking and housework, visited with the guests and helped to care for the children”. Certainly a large dose of domesticity for an old buffalo hunter and Calvary Scout. Billy enjoyed telling his stories for sure, but visiting with the guest and polite small talk was a tough matter for him. Being corralled in a home, on a street in a town, must have worn thin for Billy. No matter that Plemons could scarcely pass for a town in 1904, considering the County Courthouse was the only other two story structure.
While in Plemons, Billy became a Master Mason in the newly formed Plemons Lodge in November of 1903, and was the first Master Mason raised in Hutchinson County. He served as secretary in 1904 and 1905.
During his time in Plemons, Billy also frequented the Barber Shop. A habit he didn’t have before town living, as he had always worn his hair long. At left, an earlier picture of Dixon in his prime. Now, at right, he’s pictured in a suit with his Masonic lapel pin. .
By 1906, Billy had had enough of living in town. Ever restless, it could be that the tedium of town living grated on him. Or was this lifestyle too easy for a man that had constantly been in motion. He had an urge to start completely over again, in the last frontier- “no Man’s Land”-the Panhandle of Oklahoma. Billy was very direct about town living, saying that he:
“…found living in town worse than it could have been in jail.”
The Oklahoma Panhandle, from 1886 until 1890 was known as Cimarron Territory, then in 1890 became part of Oklahoma Territory, with the designation of Beaver County. Because the homestead act of 1862 was extended to Oklahoma Territory, Billy was able to file on one hundred sixty acres in southwest Beaver County. A ten dollar filing fee was required, as well a building a structure upon the property. After five years, the property became his. The southern border of this property was the Texas/Oklahoma line.
So Billy, Olive, and five children left Plemons. Their fourth child, a boy had been born in Plemons June 22, 1906. The home and all it’s contents, except Olives prize piano, were sold. The family’s belongings were piled into a Spaulding hack pulled by a span of mules. Billy herded six milk cows, followed by his shepherd dog ‘Watch’ and two saddle horses. The Dixon’s stayed in a canvas roofed dugout Billy had built earlier for the family’s first lodging, and he immediately began bringing in lumber to build a house. He hauled water from a nieghbor until he could hand dig a well. Soon he put up a windmill. Then a vegetable garden and an adobe milk house, then fencing, then breaking ground on forty acres with a steel plow and a mule. Building a homestead from nothing was back breaking never ending work, and Billy was now nearing sixty years old.
As Billy continued to build and improve his one hundred sixty acres, two more children were born; a daughter in October of 1908 and their last child, a boy born two years later in November of 1910, when Billy was sixty years old. By this time it was evident to Billy that with only a quarter section the best he could do was to sustenance farm. The farm would only raise and provide enough income and food to take care of his family. There wasn’t enough land to have a profitable herd, nor enough flat acreage to raise crops for market.
At last, in 1912, Olive convinced Billy to begin to dictate the exploits and adventures of his younger days. He agreed, and she kept a notebook in every room and even in the outbuilding so that when he began to reminisce, she always had pencil and paper at hand. Olive was impressed by her husband’s clarity of mind and memory, and relished the time she spent listening to Billy’s stories. She was convinced her husband was a genuine hero and legend, and spent the remainder of her life carving out his historical niche.
Oklahoma Panhandle winters can be brutal. In later life Billy began to succumb to what was then referred to as “the grippe” an old term for the flu or influenza . Usually, he worked through it, never taking to bed. In early March, 1913 he braved a very bad winter storm to go outside and tend regular chores. A few days later Olive reported Billy “went unwillingly and complaining to his bed…” and when she suggested sending for a doctor, he replied “I’ll be alright in a few days.” Olive began to worry, and as Billy became visibly weaker called her brother Archie to come and bring the two daughters who were living with Archie attending school at the time. Archie was living in Miami, Texas and had a Studebaker automobile. On Saturday the 8th, neighbors came over to visit, but Olive declined their offers to sit with Billy while she rested. That evening she slept with Billy and rose the next morning to cook breakfast. By noon on the 9th of March she was very concerned for Billy’s condition and phoned Dr. Winchester in Clayton. He was only about twenty two miles from the farm but the roads were poor, just ruts, and the he doctor finally arrived at four that afternoon.
Dr. Winchester went immediately to the bedside where he examined Billy. He felt Billy’s pulse, then turned him over. Billy Gasped for breath, and died.
“Thus passed from the scene the old Indian scout and buffalo hunter who had ranged the out-of-doors and the wide open spaces, and then settled down for his home and family. Like so many old warriors of the west he had lived through almost every hazardous type of adventure, fought Indians in desperate last- ditch battles, played a hero’s role, and then died with boots off, guns racked, and in bed. It is extremely difficult to cage the eagle that has toyed with the mountain crags. The wild stallion which has herded his flock of mares and colts to safety in canyon or on mesa top never quite recovers from being broken to work in harness. He may resign himself to circumstances but he has the look of the great open spaces in his eyes and the dignity of the free in his bearing. So persisted the bearing, the dignity and the manner of the great warriors of the West, even though change, in it’s inexorable way, may have tied them to a drab, routine life after the good old days were over.”
John McCarty, in ‘Adobe Walls Bride’, published in 1955
“Billy Dixon, who had the plains as his range in the days before the Indian and buffalo were gone and before cattle came never seemed quite at home on his 160 acre cracker box claim, even though surrounded by his loved ones. There remained for him olny one plain larger than he had known, only one plae with moe=re space the even he coule use, only on frotier he had never see. He rode over into that celestial range on a cold blustery day, March 9th, in 1913 when grippe turned into what the doctors describe as old folks’ friend, pneumonia. “
“Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, slightly older, but contemporaries nevertheless, and men cut from the same mold, passed on under strikingly similar conditions and circumstances. None reaped a material reward within the smallest fraction of his worth to the nation.”
Olive was grief stricken. Her brother Archie immediately set about helping with affairs. There was no question-Olive wouldn’t allow Billy to be buried in Oklahoma. The nearest Texas cemetery was Texline, but because it was adjacent to the state border with New Mexico, Olive requested brother Archie make sure Billy would be buried on the Texas side. A casket was purchased in Clayton, and Billy was dressed prepared for burial at home. He was dressed in a suit and placed in the casket. The funeral was conducted on March 13th at the Methodist Church in Texline, and Billy was given Masonic Graveside Rites by the Masonic Lodge in Clayton.
Olive was convinced that her husband’s story should be told to the world. After Billy’s death, she contacted Frederick Barde, a freelance contributor to the Oklahoma City Times-Journal and other national newspapers, about help in writing the book. They met and after inspecting her notes, he offered his assistance in editing and help with finding a publisher for a fee $500 dollars.
Olive agreed and borrowed the money from the bank in Clayton, New Mexico at the usurious rate of 12%. Barde found a publisher and in the fall of 1914 Olive’s book was published. The initial run was 1000 copies that sold for $1.50 per copy. Her share as an author was minuscule. Today, original copies sell for hundreds of dollars. She was very proud of her book, but the loan added to her personal financial burdens. It took Olive until 1925 to repay the loan.
We as residents of the Panhandle owe a huge debt of gratitude to Mrs. Olive King Dixon. Along the way this amazing woman, alone, raising her children, and trying to make a living, became the the Dean of Panhandle history, and carved her own place in History. She was instrumental in nearly every historic remembrance or event in the Panhandle, planning many of them. She was a founding member of the Panhandle -Plains Historical Society and the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum.
Not only did she make sure her husband was remembered, for the next forty three years she honored the pioneer spirit that conquered a wilderness. She celebrated all the men and women who helped tame this hostile environment. The men and women of the Panhandle of Texas who left us the legacy of the Panhandle Spirit.
Thank you Mrs. Dixon.
“The one woman who seemed to make it her business to keep alive public interest in the past was Olive K. Dixon…”
Joseph A. Hill, founder of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society
