Clarendon: Where the Saints Roosted

Clarendon was the third settlement in the Texas Panhandle, and it was nothing like the other two. In eighteen seventy-eight, a Methodist preacher named L. H.

Carhart led a group of Northern Methodists to the edge of the frontier to plant a dry, Christian colony on Carroll Creek. By tradition he named it Clarendon in honor of his wife, Clara. While the neighboring Panhandle towns of Mobeetie and Tascosa were known for their saloons and rough crowds, Carhart's colony banned alcohol entirely.

Cattlemen passing through took one look and said that was where the saints roosted. The nickname stuck: Saints' Roost. When the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad bypassed the original site in eighteen eighty-seven, the whole town voted and moved six miles south to meet it.

Donley County went dry again in nineteen oh two and did not allow alcohol sales again until twenty thirteen.