THE CORNER OF A COUNTY

A flat-topped hill that wanted to be a mountain is the most prominent landmark in Southeast Howard County. Perhaps it first appeared as a chalky reef on the geological time scale. As the Cretaceaous sea retreated, uplifting forces shaped and forged the hump of limestone destined to be called Signal Peak. Sea animals stranded by the retreating sea embedded into the clay and limestone. Smaller grass-eating mammals replaced the giant mammoths as plants; climate and time formed the soil profile that became the Edwards Plateau portion of Howard County. The plateau, its thin limestone soils formed and supported by the sea of grasses slashed at the margin of the undulating high plains eroding to the steep hillsides of the Cap Rock escarpment.

Until Europeans began to explore and record, intruding on the dim geological age, grasses, buffalo, and Indians are inextricably mingled. Neither nomadic Indians, lost Spanish explorers, nor surveying military troops left discernible markings on the territory south of Beal's creek and east of Signal Peak. Southeast Howard County, with its few springs, and streams that flow only in the rainy seasons, was only a stepping stone to the more inviting Big Spring and Moss Springs. The thin soils and stone fragments, which supported gramas and bluestem grasses, along with a few invading mesquite and cedar, offered little inducement to agricultural pursuits. In the 1880's homesteading ranchers began to mark the land with winding ranch roads, windmills, and eventually fences.

The earliest recorded settlement of the area began with the ranchers. Roberts, Griffin, Chalk, Clay, and Settles were among the early ones. Dora Griffin, who was to become a wealthy philanthropist, homesteaded with her husband, Andy, just south of Signal Peak in 1882, their first home, a half dugout. Andy died nine years later as the result of a ranching accident. Dora continued to operate the ranch and care for their two daughters. She married a neighboring rancher, John Roberts, in 1896. Their combined ranches became a 27 section spread. Dora's sister, Mary Nunn, married Otis Chalk, who had purchased land adjoining the Roberts' ranch and near the Glasscock County line in the early 1900's.

The ranches were typical of others in Howard County and West Texas, joined by rambling ranch roads and a mutual dependence on the growing town of Big Spring as a trade and shipping center. The hardworking and tenacious ranchers, working with and enduring the whims of nature, as dry years succeeded wet years, gradually increased their lands and their herds in spite of cattle prices that were often as capricious as the weather.

The slow, imperceptible changes wrought on the land by the pasture fences, ranch roads, stock tanks, and cultivated areas accelerated in 1925 as the search for oil focused on the area. Within a decade, this search had altered the southeast corner of Howard County more than centuries of buffalo and Indian traffic or 75 years of exploration and settlement. Each well site required the movement of a wide-rimmed drilling rig, most often pulled by teams of horses, to the chosen location. The building of a "dog house", bunk house, cookhouse, roads, and slush pits completed the location, each leaving its scar.

Fred Hyer, driller of the first successful oil well in South Howard County, used the old ranch road through Silver Hills and across the Roberts' Ranch to a site southeast of present day Forsan. On the night of November 9, 1925, oil came up. "By noon the next day a hundred cars and wagons were parked around the well." The land would never again be the same; cattle and sheep would share the land with oil. Black gold would have priority. Man turned his attention from North Howard, marked since the early 1900's by plows, fences, and section line roads, to South Howard's relatively untouched grassland and rocky hillsides.

In the spring of 1926, a few miles to the east of the Hyer well, on the Otis Chalk ranch, Owen and Sloan, independent operators, hit pay. Their Number One Chalk well came in at 100 to 200 barrels a day and the "boom" was on. A grocery and dry goods store, a supply house, a barber shop, and restaurant were among the first business enterprises to be established in Chalk. Even before production began on June 26, 1926, a barbeque and rodeo aided the start of the new settlement which had grown up almost overnight. As reported in the Big Spring Herald, Friday, June 4, 1926, hundreds of people attended the celebration of the christening of Otischalk. This name having won out over Chalkburg, Chalktown, or just plain Chalk. A writer of an oil news column in the Herald had strongly suggested the new town be named after the "hospitable old timer" who owned the land upon which the discovery well and town was located. Mrs. Henry Park, who lived just over in Glasscock county, in the Fairview community, was about 12 years old. She remembers the day as a happy, fun-filled day, especially for the children. "Children had a real good time, and I remember Vernon Phillips rode a donkey that day." A fine meal of barbequed beef and chevon was supplied by Mr. Chalk and other oil operators interested in developing the field.

The new settlement consisted primarily of several hundred tents hastily erected by workers attracted to four dollar-a-day wages, which allowed displaced agricultural workers to double or triple their usual earnings. Skilled workmen and boom town followers from as far away as Pennsylvania and West Virginia, arrived always hopeful of getting a "start" in a new play.

A few days after the naming of Otischalk, the first citizen of the new town was born to Mr. and Mrs. Willie B. Ratliff in their tent home. Reportedly, Mrs. Otis (Mary) Chalk attended the birth.

Mr. and Mrs. Chalk may have viewed their new found wealth with mixed emotions as boom town people invaded their tranquil ranch. But Mr. Chalk reacted with a community spirit, so typical of the developing West, by building a three-room building to serve as school and church. Throughout the years until his death in 1938, he continued to support the school and church, contributing to special needs and encouraging scholarship by offering cash prizes at the end of school to the best students.

The school-church, a sturdy frame structure with clapboard siding, was located on a low rocky hill about two miles southeast of the Chalk store. Perhaps this site was chosen because the grassland was best saved for the grazing cattle which learned to keep their distance from the school yard. School shoes wore out rapidly on the rocky hillside, and skinned knees and elbows were a common occurrence. The "monkey blood" bottle resided in the teacher's desk, always ready.

About a hundred yards to the north of the school was the Pure Oil Company camp with three or four houses and a tool house office. From a nearby power house, rodlines leading to pump Jacks formed a perimeter for the school yard on two sides. The Texas Electric substation, built in 1927, loomed importantly to the northeast about a quarter of a mile away.

The two large school rooms were divided by folding doors allowing the rooms to be combined when school, church, or community activities required additional space. A stage across one end of the "big" room permitted the production of school plays, but during regular school days it served as a special place for the principal's desk. Pictures of George Washington and the United States flag were prominently displayed, and the entire school assembled to begin each day with the pledge of allegiance to the flag.

Mrs. Boone (Swan) Cramer became principal of the school in 1926, Ernstine and Doris Chalk, daughters of Otis and Mary Chalk, also taught school for several years. Mrs. Cramer remembers that at one time there were about 100 students and four teachers, teaching nine grades. A former student said, "We sat three to a seat at Chalk and only two to the seat in Forsan." Students came with families from all over the United States, especially from Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and from as far away as Panama and England. She also recalls that Mr. Chalk aspired for high morals in the community, and the "ruffians" settled in Ross City, which had developed at about the same time as Chalk. She recounted one incident where a teacher found that a ten-year-old boy had a pistol at school. The boy lived at Ross City. where it had been rumored that some of the Bonnie and Clyde gang had stayed overnight. Apprehensively, Mrs. Cramer put the gun in the floor-board of the car and took the boy home. Another time, a gas leak caused the building to be evacuated and school dismissed for the day. The only casualty was Dickie Bird, the first grade teacher's canary who received a well-attended funeral the next day. Faithful first-graders continued to mark the grave with pretty stones until they were well into the second grade. In the late fall and early spring, an occasional rattlesnake was found on the school yard or under a porch, but was soon dispatched with a heavy long handled hoe kept for that purpose. However, such incidents were the exception, with an occasional fist fight between boys being a more usual interruption of routine school days.

An annual Christmas tree sponsored by the school and Sunday School was a highlight of the year with entire families attending. About a week before the event, men of the community would go up into the canyons, cut a large cedar tree, and set it up in the "big room." School children made construction paper garlands, and some time each day was spent decorating the tree. "Last year's decorations'' appeared as if by magic, and excitement grew as the children drew names in each room. Rules of utmost secrecy and "no trading" of names were only laxly enforced, heightening anticipation. If you went to Sunday School, you also drew names there, so each child could expect to receive two gifts and maybe a third if you had a best friend. Pencil boxes and sharpeners, marbles, games, and tops were common gifts. In later years "fingernail polish sets" were highly prized by the girls. Mr. Chalk provided sacks of fruit, nuts, and candy for children and grownups. These, plus gifts for all the names that had been drawn, engulfed the tree. A school play with angels and shepherds was hard pressed to hold the attention of the younger children who only wanted Santa Claus to come and pass out the gifts. Santa, with a quiet respectable red "outing" suit, called names as gifts passed from hand to hand across the crowded room. Some of the men, who had come only to bring their families, and who considered such doings were only for women and children, casually left the crowded room and in the darkness of the schoolyard shared a convivial bottle of spirits. The evening ended with sleepy children happily clutching new treasures to be examined a dozen times the next day. Brothers and sisters avidly traded candies and nuts as they piled into family cars for the drive home along winding oilfield roads.

The school-church fared better than several of the businesses in Chalk. General usage had shortened the name of the town. Thurmond Cole, first businessman in Chalk, reportedly "lost interest" in his store and filling station, and sold it to Archie Thompson and Pat Roberts. In December 1926, Mr. and Mrs. Boone Cramer from Coahoma bought the store and operated it until 1935. The barber moved into a new masonery building in Ross City next door to the beer joint and dance hall, perhaps as a convenience for the customers. The restaurant and machine shop followed the oil development westward across the county.

The store served the community well until early 1940, becoming a casually of World War II. The Star Route carrier left not only mail but fresh bread each day at the store, also, bringing other supplies as space on his truck allowed. The mail was dumped in a large box on the store counter and everybody sorted through to find their own letters. But "going to the store" was more than buying groceries or an occasional luxury, it was a meeting place for neighbors and friends to exchange news and gossip. "That little baby weighed only three pounds." "Say, could you come over tomorrow and give me a hand in loading that old milk cow."

The tent-homes surrounding the store gradually disappeared. Some under coverings of one by twelve boxing planks, battened with one by fours; others were folded and their owners followed the work. The settlement that had consisted of a dozen scattered ranch houses and a few roads across pastures evolved into a transient boom town of 500 people at its peak into a community of about 200 semi-permanent residents.

Bonds that form and change a settlement into a community frequently are fragile and not easily discernible. For Otischalk, as well as other oil field communities, "work" was the cementing bond. The school and church furnished an aura of permanence. Neighborliness substituted for family ties left behind. The community never developed deep roots because the work might "play out."

Major oil companies built houses to entice permanent employees. The largest house was occupied by the "farm boss", others were allotted by job classification, seniority, and request. Some workers preferred the privacy of living on the lease without next door neighbors. Also, to own their own dwelling, however humble, seemed preferable to some. At Chalk, the Magnolia Oil Company camp was built near the store and filling station. It consisted of four houses and a big "power" with a large Bessemer engine that popped continually day and night, compressing gas. It was reported that people became so accustomed to the sound that if it stopped during the night everyone would wake up. About one-half mile southeast, Magnolia also had an office, where the pumpers turned in their gages (report of production), and the roustabouts met the gang pusher to get instructions for the day. A garage for storage of trucks and tools, and a house for the farm boss. was located in a red clay flat which turned to a sea of mud during infrequent rains. To the north, a short distance, Coltex Oil Company had a pump station and several large storage tanks and a few company houses. To the south was a straggling row of eight or ten houses, an unofficial "Magnolia camp." Pumpers, job classification for the employees directly responsible for wells on a certain lease, usually built houses near the wells. Roustabouts, employees who pulled wells and performed miscellaneous maintenance for the company, built houses on company-leased land.

In essence, oil field workers were squatters. Many had agricultural experience in their background, having been driven from such pursuits by the slump in cotton prices in the mid-twenties. It was only natural that chicken coops, cow lots, hog pens, and gardens sprang up around the shacks of the frustrated farmers. The ranchers did not object to families owning one or two cows and allowed them to graze and breed with the ranch cattle. When roundup time started, everybody would keep the milk cows up for a day or two.

Most houses were heated by natural gas from the wells, courtesy of the oil companies. A simple regulator at each house controlled the flow. To adjust the flow, the regulator was weighted with a brick. Children were admonished "Don't play near the regulator, you might knock the brick off." The oil companies allowed employees to tie into water lines. So all the houses had "running water." Although it might be a faucet protected by a freeze box in the yard with water "toted" by the bucket.

The school continued through World War II, but consolidated with Forsan in 1946. The Union Sunday School continued to meet regularly with Baptist and Methodist ministers alternating Sundays until 1949. The building was moved to Forsan, and the Methodist Church met in it for several years. Later it was moved to Big Spring and renovated into Christ's Fellowship Hall at 11th Place and FM 700. Now even the little rocky hill where the schoolhouse stood has been graded down by oil operations.

The store and filling station closed during World War II, a victim of gas and food rationing and an exodus of people to the service and defense industries. Several attempts at operating the service station were made after the war, but progress in the form of paved roads and cheap gasoline had taken the customers to town. Also, the companies changed their methods of operation. Roustabout work was contracted out more economically than keeping regular employees on the payroll and furnishing the "fringe benefits" that come to be expected. Pumpers were replaced with automatic time clocks turning individual electric motors off and on at each well. The company houses were sold, often to the occupants. Many were moved to Big Spring and renovated into quite respectable dwellings which are still occupied.

Chalk did not have an official post office until 1939, and ironically the town had never used its chosen name, always being Chalk. However, another Chalk, Texas, existed; and the Post Office Department considered the suggested names — Chaikton or Chalktown — too similar. So Otischalk, slightly altered to Otis Chalk became the official postmark. Even with a late start, the post office outlasted the school-church, the businesses, and the people of the community; surviving until 1969.

Now, very near FM 821 a fallen skeleton of a house remains as the road curves through Oils Chalk. A place which scarcely commands the name of a ghost town. The resident population of Southeast Howard is probably no larger than the 1880 census. The oil wells are tended by workers who drive daily from Big Spring. Absentee owners operate the ranches with hired employees. Deer and turkey along with bobcats and varmints have reclaimed their territory. Plants and climate and time are slowly repairing scars made by 60 years of man's search for oil. But the searching and the scarring are not ended, only the community has ended; its existence to become as dim on history's page as its beginning on the geological page.

This article was written by Ozelta Long and appeared in "The History of Howard County". 1882-1982