Moorman City
Moorman City was established in 1920 during the Sipe Springs oil boom. The town was a development of Cul T. Moorman, a Sipe Springs native who began his career working as a clerk in the State Bank of Sipe Springs. When the drought of 1917 brought no rain and the hottest Texas summer recorded until 1982, Cul moved to Ranger to work in a larger bank that could pay better wages. It was Moorman and John M. Gholston a Ranger merchant, that approached W.K. Gordon of the Texas Pacific Coal Company about drilling for oil in the vicinity of Ranger. On October 22, 1917 the McClesky oil well was brought in just south of Ranger and only eighteen months after his arrival in Ranger, Cul Moorman was a wealthy man.
Cul Moorman soon became associated with Frank Kell of Wichita Falls and became a director of Kell’s bank, the Security State Bank of Fort Worth. Moorman partnered with Jake Hamon and others in the development of Southtown a city located immediately south of the newly formed city of Jakehamon (both located between today’s De Leon and Desdemona).
Moorman City was about 3.5 miles west of Sipe Springs, abutting the south side of the Texas Central Railroad (MKT). It was laid out on 60 acres out of a tract of land that spanned the Comanche County-Eastland County line but the town itself was entirely within Comanche County. The land was said to have previously been the Moorman family homestead but it was acquired by W.Y. Rockwell and F.R. Allison acting for Moorman from H. and Fannie Brook and E.D. O’Rear in November 1918. The town plat was filed with the county clerk on December 16, 1919.
A Post Office opened in Moorman City and on April 1, 1920, Charles L. Witty was appointed Post Master. The office was discontinued on November 15, 1920 and mail service shifted to the Sipe Springs Post Office.
The short-lived boom had ended and in less than a year Moorman City had come and gone. By 1924, it no longer showed on even county maps.
Click photo to enlarge. Plat courtesy Ruby Lesley, Comanche County Clerk.
Laid out with a huge public square that was twice the size of a football field, Moorman City had a total of 368 lots for sale in early 1920, ranging in size from 25′ x 140′ up to 50′ x 140′ and in price from $75 for low-end residential to a high of $300 for what was considered the prime commercial lots. Had all the lots been sold the developer would have made $63,460 for land that in 1917 sold for $4 an acre if a buyer could be found.
The city streets running north and south were named for oil companies of that time including Humble (now part of Exxon-Mobile), Texas (Texas Company-Texaco), Magnolia (later Mobile), and Atlantic. Those streets running east and west were named for locations of previous oil booms including, Eastland, Tulsa, Wichita (Falls), Ranger and Homer which may have been in Oklahoma. Desdemona was carefully avoided as a street name since Jake Hamon had declared that his new town of Jakehamon would assure the demise of Desdemona.