Ranger

Ranger, TEXAS.  Is located between Abilene and Fort Worth in northeastern Eastland County. It was named after the legendary Texas Rangers, who in the 1870s had a camp in a valley about two miles northeast of Ranger. This Camp would have been at the south end of the present Hagaman Lake. By 1879 the 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 tracks were laid 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 later moved to the railway and established the permanent town of Ranger. Between 1889 and 1904 Ranger grew from a town of 350 to 750, a bank, a high school, and a women's literary club. In October of 1917 the first successful Oil rig began pumping 1,700 barrels of oil a day created an oil boom for the local county. This also helped to reestablish Texas as an oil producing state and suspend fears of a nation wide oil shortage.