Ranger

Ranger, on Interstate Highway 20 between Abilene and Fort Worth in northeastern Eastland County, derived its name from the Texas Rangers qv , who in the 1870s had a camp in a valley about two miles northeast of Ranger on a prong of Palo Pinto Creek. This camp would have been at the south end of the present Hagaman Lake, earlier the Watson Ranch. By 1879 the beautiful valley housed a tent city with tent churches, schools, hotel, and general store, and was known as Ranger Camp Valley. In 1880 the Texas and Pacific Railway Company laid tracks a couple of miles west of the valley. In August 1880 I. G. Searcy deeded 160 hundred and sixty acres to Texas and Pacific Railway Company. The inhabitants of Ranger Camp Valley moved to the railway and established the permanent town of Ranger. On December 27, 1880, James M. Davis was appointed postmaster of the new Ranger post office. Between 1889 and 1904 Ranger grew from a town of 350 with two doctors to 750 with five doctors, a bank, a high school, and a women's literary club. It had become a trade center for Stephens County, an important wheat-producing area to the north.