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Train Depot at Mangum
Barney Hillerman Collection (21412.BH.34)
$10.00
Train Depot showing a train and onlookers at Mangum, Oklahoma Territory. Located at the intersection of State Highway 34 and U.S. Highway 283 in southwestern Oklahoma, Mangum is the county seat of Greer County, formerly Old Greer County. Early on, the Kiser Salt Works was located nearby on the Elm Fork of the Red River. Beginning in 1876 cattle drives went through this area using the Western Trail. In 1882 Henry Clay Sweet established the town on a land grant from Texas to A. S. Mangum. A post office was established April 15, 1886. A part of Texas at that time, this area became part of Oklahoma Territory in 1896 and Oklahoma in 1907. The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway built a line west from Chickasha to Mangum in 1900. By 1910 the Wichita Falls and Northwestern Railway (acquired by the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway in 1911) operated a line through Mangum. Incorporated in 1915, Mangum grew until farming operations became highly technical. Before farming took place in the early twentieth century, large cattle ranches existed on land owned and leased by companies such as the Day Land and Cattle Company of Texas and the Franklyn Land and Cattle Company, an English syndicate. By 1939 approximately 60 percent of the land was farmed by tenant farmers.
