GROGAN, TEXAS. Grogan was centered around a school and a post office in northeastern Ochiltree County. Although there is some doubt as to its exact location, the community was probably on land settled before 1901 by Leona Grogan, who had moved with her parents, James Gaston and Caroline (Gober) Grogan, to Ochiltree County from Shackelford County and had homesteaded 160 acres of land north of the site of present Perryton, on the state line. Leona Grogan taught school on her land in the 1901–02 school year, and in September 1903 a post office was established with Leona as postmistress. Known throughout the county for her progressive teaching methods, Miss Grogan taught at the Ochiltree community school and other schools in the area. She married Henry Coffee in 1909. After living on her homestead for a time, they moved to Ochiltree and then to Perryton after the railroad came through the area. Compounding the confusion concerning the Grogan community's location, Leona's brother, Perry A. Grogan, moved in 1901 to Ochiltree County and established a ranch and homestead on four sections of land northwest of Ochiltree in the central part of the county. A combination school and church was erected and was much used by area farmers and ranchers. A late blizzard in March 1907 killed 700 cattle, after which Perry Grogan sold his claim and moved his family to Amarillo. The community of Grogan continued with some ten residents, and its post office remained in operation until November 1915. With the construction of the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway and the rise of Perryton, the Grogan townsite, along with that of Ochiltree, was eventually abandoned.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Ed Ellsworth Bartholomew, 800 Texas Ghost Towns (Fort Davis, Texas: Frontier, 1971). Wheatheart of the Plains: An Early History of Ochiltree County (Perryton, Texas: Ochiltree County Historical Survey Committee, 1969).
