Out on the grassy flats grow Greasewood or Creosote bush and of course these not so grassy areas that consist of Very Rocky Terrain.

History of Area:

Established in 1882, Sanderson's original name was "Strobridge," after the president of the transcontinental railroad construction company. Strobridge was later renamed Sanderson after the railroad engineer, Joseph P. Sanderson.

El Despoblado, the uninhabited landthe name given it by early Spanish explorers.

Early Sanderson was frequented by border bandits, one of them being Pancho Villa. Pancho and his Mexican band were greatly feared during the early 1900s, when cattle rustling was at its peak. There were not enough Texas Rangers to protect Sanderson's cattle from the frequent raids, so the government agreed to provide feed for the ranchers' horses if the ranchers would provide their own protection. The outfit they formed became famously known as the "River Riders."

There are many burned-rock mounds, called middens, on the ranches of Pecos & Terrell County. Numerous rockshelters and caves with smoked walls and ceilings, mute evidence of long habitation by early Indian peoples, also exist in the area. In some of the shelters Indian paintings are to be found. The most extensive pictographs, on the cliff wall above Myers Spring near Dryden, include drawings of a church, deer, a large bird, and people dancing and hunting. Overpainting on these pictographs makes it clear that they were probably painted by several different Indian cultures. Arrowheads found in the area are dated by archeologists as belonging both to prehistoric and historic periods. Bits of reed matting, parts of baskets, pieces of reed sandals, and evidences of burials have also been found in the caves. Many grinding holes in flat rock surfaces, as well as manos (round stones worn smooth by pounding and rubbing), tell of the early Indians' diet of mesquite beans and dried, roasted, and ground sotol.

A number of Spanish explorers probably crossed what is now Terrell County in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1729 Capt. Jos de Berrotern explored the terrain along what is now the southern border of the area. At a spring near the site of present-day Dryden, he is said to have erected a large wooden cross. Six years later another Spaniard, Blas Mara de la Garza Falcon, found the cross while conducting an expedition in the area and named the spot Santa Cruz de Maya. The future county was crossed in 1848 by the unsuccessful Hays-Highsmith expedition while it was trying to establish a trade route between Chihuahua and New Orleans. In 1851 Lt. Nathaniel Michler, working under Major William H. Emory, mapped this portion of the boundary between Mexico and the United States. The Terrell County area was crossed by caravans of Camels in the "camel experiment" conducted by the United States Army in 185960.

Between 1871 and 1905 the area was part of Pecos County. The region was opened for settlement in the early 1880s in anticipation of the arrival of the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, which had surveyed a route through the region. Cyrus W. (Charley) Wilson developed a townsite called Strawbridge at a designated stop along the railroad, where he bought the land and laid out streets and lots. In May 1882, when the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railroad reached the site, the town was renamed Sanderson after a railroad engineer. Charles Downie, a Scot, the first permanent sheepman in the area, homesteaded there in 1881. He eventually increased his holdings to around 150,000 acres. Dryden, the only town besides Sanderson in the county, was also started in 1882 when the railroad built through the area. It was headquarters for the Pecos Land and Cattle Company, a huge ranching operation in the earliest days of white settlement. Goldseekers searching for the "Lost Nigger Mine" traveled to the county, as did a number of outlaws and gunmen. Roy Bean operated a saloon at Sanderson. By 1900 the population of this community was 112, and post offices had been established there and in Dryden.

Terrell County was formed by an act of the Texas legislature on April 8, 1905, and organized on July 27 of that year. Sanderson became the county seat. Cattle and sheep ranching have dominated the county's economy since its beginnings. In 1910 the United States census reported sixty ranches, encompassing 621,000 acres, in the county. More than 111,000 sheep, almost 19,000 goats, and about 20,000 cattle were reported in the county that year, but only 800 acres was classified as "improved." In 1930 the county had 141 ranches, encompassing almost 1,450,000 acres, and more than 351,000 sheep and about 10,000 cattle were reported; only 43 acres of cropland was harvested in the county that year. Terrell County's population rose gradually from 1,430 in 1910 to 2,680 by 1920 and to 2,952 by 1930. The number of ranches in the area dropped slightly during the Great Depression of the 1930s; 136 remained in 1940. The population rose slightly during the depression to reach 2,952 by 1940. A number of stations-Emerson, Gavilan, Feodora, Shaw, Thurston, Watkins, Malvado, Lozier-were built along the Southern Pacific Railroad between 1946 and the 1960s. Each station, or "section," had a foreman and a crew of laborers who were responsible for maintenance and repairs over about ten miles of track. The foreman and the laborers lived with their families in railroad-owned houses at the section. By the 1980s almost all had been eliminated by the railroad company: the buildings were gone, and the remaining laborers had become "floating" crews who traveled up and down U.S. 90 beside the tracks to wherever their services were needed.

LONGFELLOW, TX

LONGFELLOW, TEXAS. Longfellow is an abandoned railroad station on the tracks of the Southern Pacific Railroad in extreme southern Pecos County. The community site is on U.S. Highway 90 sixteen miles west of Sanderson. The area was first settled before the Civil War by Mexican ranchers who grazed their livestock on both sides of the Rio Grande. Longfellow was started around 1881 as the Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio Railway built through the area. The community was named by the railroad for the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It became a livestock shipping point for a wide area and soon had a railroad depot and telegraph office, as well as extensive facilities for supplying water to locomotives passing through. Once when workmen were drilling for water, they unexpectedly struck a vein of silver ore. The railroad company also operated a ballast quarry near the station. In 1890 a post office was established in Longfellow, and the town became headquarters for the Longfellow Ranch. By the mid-twentieth century improved highway transportation caused Longfellow to lose much of its trade to nearby Sanderson and other larger towns. By 1933 the post office had been discontinued. The railroad closed its freight and telegraph office in 1944, when diesel engines came into use, and the water column and well facilities were abandoned in 1954. By the mid-1980s only the ranch headquarters and the ruins of some of the old railroad buildings remained. - Glenn Justice

Neighboring Longfellow Ranch: 2002 Winner of the Lone Star Land Steward Award