I have enjoyed writing this series on Panhandle towns around Pampa. The research on each has been so interesting: Skellytown, Lefors, Wheeler, Old and New Mobeetie, Shamrock, and Borger. Now, for the last one, I am writing about White Deer. These are the communities surrounding Pampa.
I kept hearing about an Indian legend whenever I started researching White Deer. I read it so much that I decided to find the legend and see what it said! Wellsir, it goes like this: (a short version) “Ghost of the White Deer.”
A brave young Chickasaw, Blue Jay, fell in love with Bright Moon, the Chief’s daughter. The Chief said, “Bring me the hide of the White Deer.” All white animals were magical. “The price of my daughter is one white deer.”
So, this starry-eyed brave took off to find the white deer. Wellsir dog-gone-it if he didn’t see the white deer drinking from a creek and shot it with a sharp arrow. Instead of the deer running away, he turned and ran toward Blue Jay with his red eyes glowing and his sharp horns coming for him!
A month passed, and Bright Moon had not heard from her love. The tribe decided Blue Jay was no longer with them. She never married, and she is always waiting for Blue Jay. To this day, the white deer is sacred to the Chickasaw People. The creek that the deer was drinking from was named White Deer Creek.
And that’s the story about the legend of White Deer…. Now let’s see about the town.
White Deer is in Carson County and is 15 miles southwest of Pampa. It, along with two other towns, has a mascot. These are the only three towns in Texas with a mascot.
Snyder has a white buffalo carved from native stone. On a hunting trip in 1873, twenty-year-old J. Wright Mooar ventured into the Texas Panhandle. In a crowd of roughly 4,000 bison, he caught the eye of a glistening white buffalo. Mooar recruited the help of a buffalo skinner and crawled close enough to take a lethal shot, bringing the four-year-old female calf down. The Mooar family still has the buffalo pelt.
The other town is Muleshoe, Texas. The name Muleshoe can be traced in the region to Henry Black, who registered a brand on November 12, 1860. In 1877, Black purchased three houses on 40,000 acres and named it Muleshoe Ranch. In 1926, Muleshoe was incorporated.
During the early 1960s, Texas residents were eager to build a memorial to the mule for its strength and sparse eating habits, traits that endeared it to the pioneers. In war, the mule pulled a cannon. In peace, it hauled freight. The Mule Memorial was first displayed on July 4, 1965. They call him “Pete.”
In 1884, 100 Polish families embarked on a journey to America, landing in Galveston. They walked 200 miles to Panna Maria in South Texas, where they worked for minimum wage. In 1909, the White Deer Land Company offered them small farms, and they accepted. Then, the first Catholic Church was completed in 1913. The community was initially named Payton after John Payton, then changed to Whig, and finally renamed White Deer in January 1889 after the White Deer Creek. The town was moved near the railroad in 1908.
White Deer’s history is rich with ethnic diversity, particularly when Henry Czerner and Ben Urbanczyk established the community of Polish farmers!
The last great Texas Panhandle Cattle Drive was organized at the N Bar N headquarters near White Deer. The ranch manager was J. L. Harrison, and the trail boss was T. L. Coffee. From April to September in 1892, 100 cowboys drove ten herds, each with 2500 heads of cattle, for a total of 25,000 animals to Montana. The Niedringhaus Brothers owned the cattle.
The oil boom brought many settlers to this area. Despite the challenges, including a disastrous fire in 1931 and tornadoes in 1947 and 1951, the community persevered and continued to thrive.
Wellsir, this brings White Deer up to the present day. It was interesting to learn about the Indian legend, the Polish community established with small ranches and farms, and the cattle drives starting from this area of Texas. I hope you have enjoyed coming along with me to these little communities.
The Panhandle has many little towns like these we’ve written about, such as Groom, Panhandle, Dalhart, Canadian, Clarington, Wellington, Canyon, and Stinnett, and I could go on with all the others.
Maybe you have increased your interest in how these places got their beginnings. Do a little research on each of them!
The Panhandle has wide open spaces, beautiful sunsets, and exciting people. Early Spanish explorers described the plains as looking like they were on the sea, with no land markers for them to follow. They created the Llano Estacado, sometimes translated into English as the Staked Plains.
Spanish explorer Francisco Coronado, the first European to travel this “sea of grass” in 1541, described it as follows:
“I reached some plains so vast that I did not find their limit anywhere I went, although I traveled over them for more than 300 leagues ... with no more land marks than if the sea had swallowed us up... there was not a stone, nor bit of rising ground, nor a tree, nor a shrub, nor anything to go by. ”
This is the Panhandle, sometimes called “The Caprock”—the home for many of us. We may move away, but our hearts stay here…
Ahhh, yes… Those were the days, indeed!
