Fighting to file in Ector County

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When a client asked me to expedite a property filing in Ector County, Texas, I left the office at 5:30 the next morning. I wanted to be standing on the courthouse steps when the Court House opened. Odessa, the county seat, is almost 130 miles from our home office in Lubbock.

I was the first to the filing counter that morning. In fact, I was the only one at the counter, but the Deputy Clerk told me that I would have to wait another half hour while they prepared to accept the filing.

Grumbling, I walked outside to kill some time by reading the historical markers. One marker caught my interest. I learned I wasn't the first to wait on the courthouse steps to file a deed.

Ector County Land Rush
"Here in 1904, a fight involved almost every man in Ector County about filing a claim for four sections of public land. Elias Dawson and Charlie Lewis each brought friends to help him file. Before courthouse doors opened, several men had clothes or boots torn off in foes’ efforts to find filing papers. When the doors opened, a man was boosted over the heads of the crowd. Lewis won the four sections of land."

During the land rush of 1904 at the Ector County Courthouse, fights among pioneers occurred almost daily to determine who would file a claim on land. One fight was caught on film by the local newspaper.

Records show that beginning on January 20, 1904, there was a curfew around the courthouse from 6:00 PM to 8:00 AM to deal with the crowds. Finally the Texas Rangers sent in a man to keep the peace.

Fights were breaking out on courthouse steps all across Texas in 1904. One man hid out in a courthouse overnight so he would be the first in to file for his four sections. Cattle chutes were used in some counties as ramps to the clerks windows. The chutes were filled day and night for months by early pioneers waiting to get their four sections of land.

When the Republic of Texas joined the United States the state retained control over 200,000 acres of public lands - the only state to do so. Texas used the lands to attract settlers, pay soldiers and Indian fighters, compensate Civil War soldiers or widows with land and traded three million acres of land for the state capitol building.

By 1883 the Texas public lands were over-committed. Free grazing had to be stopped. Terminations of leases and the correction of surveys later made available some land for filing. This led to the 1904 rush.

I guess my rush filing wasn't so tough after all.

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