Kelley (Texas)
New member
While doing some historical research this morning, I came across this story written by C. F. Eckhardt of Seguin, Texas. Mr. Eckhardt is well known for his stories about the history of Texas...wrote about the Alamo, Jim Bowie's silver mine in the Texas Hill Country and more. this is a little long, but I think that you will enjoy it. Please have a great day! Kelley (Texas) 
STAMPEDE MESA
by C. F. Eckhardt
Texas is a land of many legends. Some of them are just that-legends. Some of them have a germ of truth in them-and some of them are entirely true. At one time, when I was a young man, I had the opportunity to hear what some would call a legend from a man who experienced it.
Lon Schuyler had been a cowboy for about as long as anybody could remember. He thought he was born in 1880, but he wasn't sure about that. He was sure that he went up the trail with an 'Injun-beef' drive in '92 "an' I was just a button kid then." He worked as nighthawk and wrangler and was told he could 'catch up on his sleep next winter.'
In 1902, on another 'Injun-beef' drive, this one all the way to Montana, Lon was with what was probably the last herd to hold on what's known as 'Stampede Mesa.' Not many people know about Stampede Mesa these days, but from the early 1880s until Texas cattlemen quit driving beef north, those two words would make a cold-footed rat run up and down a cowboy's spine. Stampede Mesa was-and may still be-one of the most thoroughly haunted places in Texas.
Go get a map of the state. One of the Highway Department maps will do. Look up where the eastern edge of the Panhandle hits the Red River. A little east and south of there you'll see a lake called Blanco Canyon Reservoir. On the east side of the lake you'll see a tiny peninsula-a point of land jutting out into the lake. That's Stampede Mesa.
Stampede Mesa isn't a mesa in the sense of the mesa country of New Mexico and Arizona. It was, before the incident that gave it the name, called 'the holding point on the North Blanco.' What is now called the White River was then known as the North Blanco. It was a place about a section in extent, somewhat rocky on top but with plenty of grass. On the east side ran what people who only saw it after a rain called McNeil Creek and most folks knew as McNeil Draw. On the west side ran the North Blanco. There was a dropoff into McNeil Draw of anywhere from five or six to about twenty-five feet, and a dropoff into Blanco Canyon of nearly 200 feet at the highest point.
Those dropoffs were natural fences. A trailboss could throw his herd onto the point, put a light guard across the north end of the point, and rest men, horses, and cattle for a couple of days, with plenty of grass and water, before lining out north. It was a very popular place to hold a herd.
So the story goes, sometime in the early '80s a trailboss had some trouble there. There are two versions of how the trouble started. In both, a nester had set himself up on Dockum Flat to the north of the holding point. In one, when the herd came through, his cows-not many-as cows will, joined the herd. The nester demanded the trailboss cut them out of his herd.
The boss and the cowboys were tired, and so were the cows. The nester was told the herd would be cut after the men had rested. The nester got insistent. He ended up looking down the wrong end of a sixshooter. He was told that the boss would cut the herd when he got damned good and ready, and if he pushed the issue any further there would be no need to cut the herd "
STAMPEDE MESA
by C. F. Eckhardt
Texas is a land of many legends. Some of them are just that-legends. Some of them have a germ of truth in them-and some of them are entirely true. At one time, when I was a young man, I had the opportunity to hear what some would call a legend from a man who experienced it.
Lon Schuyler had been a cowboy for about as long as anybody could remember. He thought he was born in 1880, but he wasn't sure about that. He was sure that he went up the trail with an 'Injun-beef' drive in '92 "an' I was just a button kid then." He worked as nighthawk and wrangler and was told he could 'catch up on his sleep next winter.'
In 1902, on another 'Injun-beef' drive, this one all the way to Montana, Lon was with what was probably the last herd to hold on what's known as 'Stampede Mesa.' Not many people know about Stampede Mesa these days, but from the early 1880s until Texas cattlemen quit driving beef north, those two words would make a cold-footed rat run up and down a cowboy's spine. Stampede Mesa was-and may still be-one of the most thoroughly haunted places in Texas.
Go get a map of the state. One of the Highway Department maps will do. Look up where the eastern edge of the Panhandle hits the Red River. A little east and south of there you'll see a lake called Blanco Canyon Reservoir. On the east side of the lake you'll see a tiny peninsula-a point of land jutting out into the lake. That's Stampede Mesa.
Stampede Mesa isn't a mesa in the sense of the mesa country of New Mexico and Arizona. It was, before the incident that gave it the name, called 'the holding point on the North Blanco.' What is now called the White River was then known as the North Blanco. It was a place about a section in extent, somewhat rocky on top but with plenty of grass. On the east side ran what people who only saw it after a rain called McNeil Creek and most folks knew as McNeil Draw. On the west side ran the North Blanco. There was a dropoff into McNeil Draw of anywhere from five or six to about twenty-five feet, and a dropoff into Blanco Canyon of nearly 200 feet at the highest point.
Those dropoffs were natural fences. A trailboss could throw his herd onto the point, put a light guard across the north end of the point, and rest men, horses, and cattle for a couple of days, with plenty of grass and water, before lining out north. It was a very popular place to hold a herd.
So the story goes, sometime in the early '80s a trailboss had some trouble there. There are two versions of how the trouble started. In both, a nester had set himself up on Dockum Flat to the north of the holding point. In one, when the herd came through, his cows-not many-as cows will, joined the herd. The nester demanded the trailboss cut them out of his herd.
The boss and the cowboys were tired, and so were the cows. The nester was told the herd would be cut after the men had rested. The nester got insistent. He ended up looking down the wrong end of a sixshooter. He was told that the boss would cut the herd when he got damned good and ready, and if he pushed the issue any further there would be no need to cut the herd "
