Vernon and Doan's Crossing: A Million Cattle Wide

Vernon, the seat of Wilbarger County, owes its early life to a shallow, low-water crossing of the Red River about ten miles north of here called Doan's Crossing. In the early eighteen eighties the Doan family built a store there to supply trail hands pushing longhorn herds up the Great Western Trail toward Dodge City, Kansas. In eighteen eighty-five alone, three hundred thousand head of cattle, two hundred thousand sheep, and nearly two hundred thousand horses crossed the Red River at that one spot.

Vernon was platted in eighteen eighty on land donated by Robert Franklin Jones and won the county seat two years later. The Fort Worth and Denver City Railway arrived in eighteen eighty-six, and within six years Vernon had three thousand five hundred residents, electric streetlights, and a street railway. Doan's Crossing now carries a historical marker and not much else.