Eastland County Texas map
32.33° N · 98.84° W · County seat: Eastland · 932 sq mi
In October 1917 the McCleskey well came in near Ranger and turned Eastland County into the biggest oil boom Texas had seen since Spindletop. The boom lasted about three years and left behind four towns strung along what is now Interstate 20, none of which ever grew back to their 1920 size.
I-20 runs west to east across the top third of the county through Cisco, Eastland and Ranger.
Where Eastland County is
The county sits on the eastern edge of West Texas, where the Cross Timbers give way to rolling prairie. Seven counties surround it: Stephens north, Palo Pinto northeast, Erath east, Comanche southeast, Brown south, Callahan west and Shackelford northwest.
Abilene is 53 miles west in a straight line and Fort Worth 93 miles northeast — I-20 connects the county directly to both, which is why the towns here function as a midpoint stop rather than as an isolated cluster. The county was created in 1858 from Bosque, Coryell and Travis counties and organized in 1873. It is named for William Mosby Eastland, a Texas Revolution officer and the only officer to draw a black bean and be executed after the Mier Expedition in 1843.
Towns along the interstate
| Place | Type | 2020 population |
|---|---|---|
| Cisco | City | 3,888 |
| Eastland | City (county seat) | 3,646 |
| Ranger | City | 2,298 |
| Gorman | City | 984 |
| Rising Star | Town | 760 |
| Carbon | Town | 281 |
Cisco, Eastland and Ranger sit in a row on I-20 within about twenty miles of each other, and no one of them dominates: the seat is the second-largest town in the county, not the first. Gorman, Rising Star and Carbon are farming towns in the southern half, off the interstate on the state highway network. Cisco College, a public two-year school with campuses in Cisco and Abilene, is the largest institution in the county.
Roads
- I-20 – crosses the county west to east with exits at Cisco, Eastland and Ranger; it replaced the old US-80 alignment that the boom towns grew along.
- US-183 – runs north–south through Eastland, north toward Breckenridge and south to Rising Star and Brownwood.
- State Highway 6 – southeast from I-20 at Eastland through Carbon and Gorman toward De Leon and Dublin.
- State Highway 16 – north–south through the eastern side of the county past Ranger.
- State Highway 36 – enters from Comanche County in the southeast and runs northwest through Rising Star toward Cross Plains.
- State Highway 112 – a short connector in the western half of the county, tying the smaller communities to the interstate.
The Ranger boom
Ranger was a farming town of a few hundred people in a drought when a local committee persuaded Texas Pacific Coal Company to drill. The McCleskey No. 1 came in in October 1917, and within two years the town was one of the busiest places in the state — the peak population is usually put near 30,000, against 2,298 in 2020. Wells followed at Desdemona in the southeast and around Cisco, and the field's timing mattered: it produced through the last year of the First World War, when fuel oil was scarce.
The bust was as fast as the boom. By the mid-1920s drilling had moved on, and the physical legacy is mostly street grids laid out for a city that never filled them, plus the brick and stone commercial buildings on the main streets of all three towns. Conrad Hilton was in Cisco in 1919 trying to buy a bank, could not get a hotel room, bought the Mobley Hotel instead, and dated the start of his chain from it. Cisco was also the site of the 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery, in which the lead robber wore a Santa suit.
Old Rip
When the Eastland County courthouse was rebuilt in 1928, a horned lizard was taken from the cornerstone of the 1897 building, having supposedly been sealed inside it for 31 years. The animal was said to be alive. It was named Old Rip, toured the country, died within a year, and was embalmed. The lizard is still on display in a small casket in the lobby of the present courthouse on the Eastland square, which is the reason a good number of drivers pull off I-20 here.