MCCLELLAN CREEK. McClellan Creek rises at the conjunction of two branches (at 35°15' N, 101°28' W), at the edge of the Llano Estacado^qv in southwestern Gray County, and runs northeast for about thirty miles to join the North Fork of the Red River near the eastern county line (at 35°22' N, 100°34' W). The stream was named by Randolph B. Marcy^qv in 1852 for his second in command, George B. McClellan.^qv The north branch was the scene of Lt. Francis (Frank) Leonard Dwight Baldwin's^qv wagon charge on Grey Beard's^qv Cheyenne village on November 8, 1874, during which Julia and Adelaide German (see GERMAN SISTERS) were rescued. The Francklyn Land and Cattle Company's^qv Diamond F cattle grazed along the creek during the last two decades of the 1800s, and in the 1920s several natural gas deposits were found near its banks. The main or southern branch of the stream is dammed to form Lake McClellan (also known as McClellan Creek Lake). The stream crosses flat to rolling terrain with local escarpments, surfaced with fine sandy loam that supports brush and grasses.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in the Texas Panhandle, 1876-1887 (Amarillo: Paramount, 1981). Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Panhandle Pilgrimage: Illustrated Tales Tracing History in the Texas Panhandle (Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains, 1976; 2d ed., Amarillo: Paramount, 1978).