Parker County history

Weatherford was designated as the county seat, and by 1858 the town had a new two-story brick courthouse surrounded by a handful of cabins and tents.

In September 1861, after the beginning of the Civil War, many young men from Parker County enlisted in Parsons' Brigade.

Weatherford College, which began in 1869, is the oldest junior college west of the Mississippi.

In 1870 the agricultural census reported only 148 farms and ranches in the county, fewer than half the number ten years earlier, and only about 6,000 acres was classified as "improved." Corn and wheat production and livestock counts that year remained significantly below pre-war levels.

In 1875 Comanche Chief Quanah Parker acknowledged profound changes: The buffalo had been decimated, the prairie belonged to settlers, and the future depended on peaceful assimilation.

By 1880 there were 1,865 farms and ranches, encompassing almost 271,000 acres, in Parker County, and its population had grown to 15,870.

In 1882, Medera became Aledo, a bow to a railroad executive’s Illinois hometown.

The present Second Empire structure was built in 1885 at a cost of $55,555.55.

By 1925 residents drove Bankhead Highway, the first all-weather transcontinental road in the nation.

In 1946 a group of Parker County men founded the National Cutting Horse Association, an organization that today boasts a membership of almost 20,000.