Anson: The Cowboys' Christmas Ball

Anson, county seat of Jones County, was renamed in eighteen eighty-two for Anson Jones, the last president of the Republic of Texas. But the town is best known for something that happened three years later in a hotel ballroom. By most accounts in eighteen eighty-five, M.

G. Rhoads hosted a grand dance at his Star Hotel for local ranchers and cowboys, launching what became the Cowboys' Christmas Ball. Poet Larry Chittenden attended and published a poem about the night in eighteen ninety that made the event famous.

The ball ran annually until the hotel burned in eighteen ninety, then faded, then was revived in nineteen thirty-four by a schoolteacher named Leonora Barrett. Pioneer Hall was built in nineteen forty as its permanent home. The ball still happens every December, making it one of the longest-running frontier traditions in Texas.