IN THE VALLEY OF THE DOG EAR
The boom in Megory and Calias took such proportions that it made every
investor prosperous, a goodly number of whom sold out, settled in
Amoureaux, and the beautiful townsite soon became one of the most
popular trade centers in the new county. It was the only townsite where
trees stood, and the investors thought it a great thing that they would
not have to wait a score of years to grow them.
Among the money investors in the town was old Dad Durpee, the former
Oristown and Megory stage driver. When talking with him one day he told
me he had saved three thousand dollars while running the stage line and
had several good horses besides. "Dad," as he was familiarly called, had
invested a part of his bank account in a corner lot and put up a
two-story building, and soon became an Amoureaux booster. Old "Dad"
opened up a stage line between Calias and the new town, but this line
did not pay as well as the old one, for no one rode with him except when
the weather was bad, as the people were all riding now in automobiles.
In a short time every line of business was represented in Amoureaux and
when the settlers began to arrive, Amoureaux did a flourishing business.
In coming from Calias, the trail led over a monstrous hill, and from the
top "Amro," the name having been shortened, nestling in the valley
below, reminding me of Mexico City as it appeared from the highlands
near Cuernavaca. A party from Hedrick, by the name of Van Neter, built a
hotel fifty by one hundred feet, with forty rooms, and during the
opening and filing made a small fortune. The house was always full and
high prices were charged, and thus Amro prospered.
During the month of April the promoters succeeded in having the governor
call an election to organize the county, the election to be held in June
following. The filing had been made in April and May, and as conditions
were, no one could vote except cowboys, Indians and mixed-bloods. In the
election Amro won the county seat, and settlers moving into the county
were exceedingly mortified over the fact, having to be governed eighteen
months by an outlaw set who had deprived them of a voice in the
organization of the county. As Amro had won, it soon became the central
city and grew, as Calias had grown, and in a short time had a half-dozen
general stores, two garages, four hotels, four banks, and every other
line of business that goes to make up a western town. Its four livery
barns did all the business their capacity would permit, while the
saloons and gamblers feasted on the easy eastern cash that fell into
their pockets. In July the lot sales of the government towns were held,
but only one amounted to much, that town being farthest west and miles
from the eastern line of the county. This was Ritten, and under a ruling
of the Interior Department, a deposit of twenty-five dollars was
accepted on an option of sixty days, after which a payment of one-half
the price of the lot was required. Here it must be said that almost
every dollar invested on the Little Crow had been doubled in a short
time, and in many instances a hundred dollars soon grew to a thousand or
more.
Practically all the lowest number holders had filed around Ritten,
including numbers one and two. Ever since the opening of Oklahoma in
1901, when number one took a claim adjoining the city of Lawton, and the
owner is said to have received thirty thousand dollars for it, the
holder of number one in every opening of western land since has been a
very conspicuous figure, and this was not lost on the holder of number
one in Tipp county--who was a divorced woman. She took her claim
adjoining the town of Ritten, which fact brought the town considerable
attention. The lots in the town brought the highest price of any which
had been sold in any town on the Little Crow, up to that time, several
having sold for from one thousand, two hundred to one thousand, four
hundred dollars and one as high as two thousand and fifty dollars.
The town of Amro, being surrounded by Indian allotments, had few
settlers in its immediate vicinity. The Indians, profiting by their
experience in Megory county, where they learned that good location meant
increase in the value of their lands, had, in selecting allotments,
taken nearly all the land just west of Amro, as they had taken
practically all of the good land just west of Calias in the eastern part
of Tipp county. The good land all over the county had been picked over
and the Indians had selected much of the best, but Tipp county is a
large one, and several hundred thousand acres of good land were
available for homesteading, though much scattered as to location.
When July arrived and still no surveyors for the railroad company had
put in their appearance, it was feared that no extension work would be
commenced that year, but shortly after the lot sale at Ritten, the
surveyors arrived in the county and ran a survey west from Calias eleven
miles to a town named after the Colones, referred to, striking the town,
then proceeding northwest, missing Amro and crossing the Dog Ear about
two miles north of the town, then following a divide almost due west to
the county line on the west, running just south of a conspicuous range
of hills known as the "Red Hills," missing every town in the county
except Colone. This caused a temporary check in the excitement around
Amro, but as it had the county seat it felt secure, as a county seat
means much to a western village, and felt the railroad would eventually
go there. In fact the citizens of the town boasted that the road could
not afford to miss it, pointing with pride to the many teams to be seen
in her streets daily and the bee-like activity of the town in general. I
visited the town many times, but from the first time I saw the place I
felt sure the railroad would never go there as two miles to the north
was the natural divide, that the survey had followed all the way from
Colone to the Dog Ear and on to the west side of the county, which is a
natural right-of-way. When I argued with the people in the town, that
Amro would not get the railroad, I brought out a storm of protest.