Quanah: Named for the Last Comanche Chief

The town of Quanah, in Hardeman County, carries the first name of Quanah Parker, the last paramount chief of the Comanche. Parker's mother was Cynthia Ann Parker, a white captive raised among the Comanche; his father was Peta Nocona, a Kwahadi band leader. The Fort Worth and Denver City Railway surveyed this townsite in eighteen eighty-four and began selling lots the following year.

A post office opened in eighteen eighty-six, and by eighteen ninety Quanah had won the county-seat election over the older town of Margaret. A flash flood in June of eighteen ninety-one dropped fourteen inches of rain in four hours, wrecked the town and the wheat harvest. Less than three months later a fire took much of what was left.

Quanah Parker himself lived until nineteen eleven and watched the town that bore his name outlast those disasters and grow.