27. Comanche, Comanche County

It may be hard to tell, but there’s a bit of a Native American theme to be found here…

But these are not my favorite parts of this trip.  Want to hear a story?

You see this tree and rock?  The ones right on the courthouse square?  Well, check this out…  So apparently the town’s first jail was made out of stones stacked on top of one another and chains were bolted to a big stone that was part of the building.  The first time that the jail was used was for a town drunk.  He was chained to the wall.  However, the rock that the chains were bolted to was too small because he managed to pull it out and proceeded to beat a deputy with the stone and escape.  So the town got a new, much bigger stone (the one pictured), anchored chains to it, and put it in the wall so that it wouldn’t happen again.  And that stone remained until the jail was torn down and replaced with a new building.  Well, some local townsperson (someone of some repute there if I remember correctly) just took it home.  After he died (because of course it was a guy), his wife didn’t want it so she gave it back to the county and they just dumped it next to this historic tree.  What’s so historic about it?  Well, at one point, an early settler hid behind this tree to avoid being jumped by Indians.  That’s it.  It was remembered as that for years, but in the 40’s, the county was going to cut it down and sent a team to do so.  So a descendant of the hider known as “Uncle Mart” pulled a shotgun on the team, preventing them from cutting it down, and it, along with the jailhouse chain stone, are still there today for everyone to see.  I could not make this up and be believed…

Since there weren’t any caches around the square, I ended up driving back up the way I came from to grab one.  See that teepee further up the page?  There was a 1.0/1.5 ammo can inside.  The trackable that was supposed to be inside wasn’t so I signed the log and jumped back on the rainy road, bound for…