On Friday, October 18, I submitted final grades for the first 8-week Fall semester at Amarillo College and headed east to Oklahoma. My mother was in the hospital at Altus. Over the weekend, my dad and I took turns staying with her. She's doing better now and has been discharged from the hospital.
Before leaving Altus on Sunday, going back west toward Amarillo, I stopped by a few places of interest to me.
One of the earliest white settlements in the area was a place called Frazer (alternately spelled Frazier), a forerunner of present-day Altus. A post office was established at Frazer in February 1886. That was ten years before the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the U.S., not Texas, owned the territory south and west of the North Fork of the Red River. So, from the time people began living at Frazer, until the settlement was destroyed by a flood in June 1891, it was always a part of Greer County, Texas. Today, the same region (which comprises Jackson, Greer, and Harmon Counties, and part of Beckham County, Oklahoma) is known as "
Old Greer County."
Residents of Frazer buried their dead in a cemetery that lay perhaps to the north and east of the settlement (and to the west of present-day Altus). I visited the
Frazer Cemetery and took a few photos:
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| According to online sources I found, there are approximately 63 graves in Frazer Cemetery. The cemetery is located west of Altus, on County Road 202, about a half mile south of U.S. Route 62. |
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| On Sunday afternoon, October 20, the big sky was quite a scene looking to the north and east. |
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If gravestones like these ones date to 1891, they must have been crafted somewhere else in Texas and brought to Frazer by wagon.
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Frazer was located near the confluence of Bitter Creek and the Salt Fork of the Red River. These two streams flow south-southeast towards the Red River, and are located west of Altus. When heavy rains flooded both streams in June 1891, flowing water covered all of the land in and around Frazer. Residents woke up with water up to their beds. In the middle of the night they started making their way north and east toward a place that came to be called
Altus, a Latin term that means "high."
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| This sign greets travelers on U.S. Route 62 heading east. |
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| Under the bridge, I was surprised to find a good bit of water. The creek was flowing and frogs were jumping. After a minute or two, I smelled a skunk and got out of there. My shoes and jeans were covered with stickers. |
