Williams Ranch is the oldest settlement in Mills County, Texas

Mills County, Texas

Mills County is a county located on the Edwards Plateau in Central Texas. In 2000, its population was 5,151. Mills County is named for John T. Mills, a justice of the Texas Supreme Court...

, with the oldest known cemetery in the vicinity dating back to the mid-19th century. The location is about 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Mullin

Mullin, Texas

Mullin is a town in Mills County in Northwestern Central Texas. The population was 175 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Mullin is located at .According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , all of it land....

, and 8 miles (12.9 km) northwest of Goldthwaite

Goldthwaite, Texas

Goldthwaite is a small city located in Mills County in Central Texas. The population was 1,802 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Mills County, which is named for John T. Mills, a justice of the Supreme Court for the Third, Seventh, and Eighth districts of the former Republic of Texas....

, the county seat. When originally settled, Williams Ranch was located in the far southern portion of what is now Brown County

Brown County, Texas

Brown County is a county in West Central Texas. As of 2000, the population was 37,674. Its county seat is Brownwood. Brown is named for Henry Stevenson Brown, a commander at the Battle of Velasco...

. (Mills County was formed in 1887.)

History

Around 1855, a John Williams from North Carolina was passing through the area and decided to camp for the night beside a spring on Mullin Creek. Impressed with the location, he bought some land from a fellow whose last name was Williams(W. W. Williams) decided to stay and established a ranch on the springs. The reason the town is called Williams Ranch- because all of John Williams sons had Ranches there. During the next ten years, a community grew around Williams Ranch consisting of a number of homes, a hotel, a general store, a school and a number of other businesses including a stage stop. A post office operated in Williams Ranch from 1877 to 1892. The reason the town died was out of greed, because the railroad was going to go through there, but the people raised the price of their lands to high, so the railroad bypassed Williams Ranch, Texas. Outlaw John Wesley Hardin

John Wesley Hardin

John Wesley Hardin was an American outlaw, gunfighter, and controversial folk hero of the Old West. He was born in Bonham, Texas. Hardin found himself in trouble with the law at an early age, and spent the majority of his life being pursued by both local lawmen and federal troops of the...

 met Deputy Sheriff Charles Webb in Williams Ranch about a month before Hardin killed Webb. By the 1880s, the community had about 250 residents. Its demise began when it was bypassed by the Santa Fe Railroad in 1885 but more for the reason of the feud that existed between the town's original settlers and its newcomers..

Today, there is ample evidence of what was once a thriving ranching community including a well-maintained cemetery. The Allen family presently own property adjacent to the cemetery and are local historians.

Geography

Williams Ranch is sited near Mullin Creek, which rises in central Mills County and runs southwest for 12 miles to join on Brown Creek. The settlement served as a stage stop on The Wire Road, a dirt road running from Austin to Fort Phantom Hill

Fort Phantom Hill

Fort Phantom Hill was an United States Army and Confederate Army installation located at the Clear Fork of the Brazos River in Jones County, Texas. The fort was active from 1852 to 1853 and again from 1856 until the 1890s....

 near Abilene named for the telegraph line which was the first communication line between Austin and the military outpost. The local terrain is characterized by steep slopes and benches

Bench (geology)

In geomorphology, geography and geology, a bench or benchland is a long, relatively narrow strip of relatively level or gently inclined land that is bounded by distinctly steeper slopes above and below it...

, surfaced by shallow clay loams or sandy soils, which support juniper

Juniper

Junipers are coniferous plants in the genus Juniperus of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on taxonomic viewpoint, there are between 50-67 species of juniper, widely distributed throughout the northern hemisphere, from the Arctic, south to tropical Africa in the Old World, and to the...

, live oak

Live oak

Live oak , also known as the southern live oak, is a normally evergreen oak tree native to the southeastern United States...

, mesquite

Mesquite

Mesquite is a leguminous plant of the Prosopis genus found in northern Mexico through the Sonoran Desert and Chihuahuan Deserts, and up into the Southwestern United States as far north as southern Kansas, west to the Colorado Desert in California,and east to the eastern fifth of Texas, where...

, and grasses.

External links

• Williams Ranch historical marker entry in the Texas Historic Sites Atlas
• Williams Ranch - Texas Ghost Town
• Williams Ranch Cemetery listing