Amarillo sculptor Lightnin' McDuff was digging on his property a while back when he discovered something that has become an Amarillo history mystery.

Lightnin' asked me during a Friday morning artist's coffee if I could come by and take a look at something he had found on his property. He knew I was interested in Amarillo history and he had a suspicion the concrete block may date back to the early days of Amarillo. The location of the find is situated diagonally across the intersection of 5th Ave. and Bowie from the original location for the Potter County Courthouse.

 The original Potter County courthouse was simply a tent. The county seat at the time was Oneida, a planned town encompassing Amarillo Lake and served by the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway in 1887. The street names were not the same as they are now. Residential and commercial lots were sold on land surrounding the courthouse square. Oneida thrived until spring rains arrived and flooded the whole town.

Henry Sanborn had been living in the area for several years before the flood and convinced his boss William Bush to invest in four sections of higher land east of the Oneida town plat. So most moved to higher ground and the town became Amarillo. But the courthouse location was kept for many years for a wood courthouse (later moved and used as a schoolhouse) and then a courthouse made of limestone. So there was still activity in the area for a number of years. If you are interested in early Amarillo history, check out the Handbook of Texas Online.

So how did this concrete block wind up buried in the ground a couple of feet? And what is it? you can click on the photo above to see the image in the Gallery. Click on the photo again on that page and you can view a larger version. The artistic relief appears to have been cast with the concrete which seems to be of very good quality and is re-inforced with barbed wire around the outer edges. You can see the wire poking out on the right edge of the object.

The object is devoid of any writing with the sides and sides and back of the object are relatively smooth. So do the lines on the raised edges on the front indicate the piece was cast face down on an uneven surface or are they scratches from something dragged over it somewhere in time?

The relief depicts a "prairie schooner" type of wagon being pulled by a team of oxen driven by a person holding a whip on a rod. There are a couple of significant wagon trails in the area. The Southern Cutoff of the Santa Fe Trail is located a hundred miles north in Oklahoma's Cimarron County. Then there is the less well known Gregg's Trail from Sante Fe to Fort Smith, Akansas which ran right by Amarillo (now called Wildhorse) Lake before the railroad arrived.

So how old is this artifact and what can its original purpose be? Is it part of a monument to "The Wagon Trail", a historical marker, decoration on a building, a piece of yard art or someone just fooling around trying to make a bird bath?

It is possible that I can determine an age by closer examination of the barbed wire. That will cause me to wind up at the Devil's Rope Museum where there are samples of just about every type of barbed wire ever made in the US and perhaps other countries.

I can try the County Clerks office to see who has owned the lot in the past, then go by the library to identify any information about the structures that may have occupied the lot.

I also have a print I can show around to some Amarillo old timers. Wonder if that will shake any marbles?

I will entertain any ideas you have in trying to discover more about this artifact. Use the Contact button at the top of the page to send me a message.

I will accept just about anything short of doing a full blown archeological dig on Lightnin's materials storage yard. That's a lot of heavy material to move around since Lightnin' loves to create large metal schulptures.