ROXANA, TEXAS. Roxana was the first and, for a time, the largest, of the oil camps to be built at the newly discovered pool in the northeast corner of Carson County during the mid-1920s. Roxana was named after the oil company that first drilled the site. It grew rapidly after fourteen rigs were erected around the Roxana discovery well. A post office was opened there on February 7, 1927. When the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway completed its oilfield branch line from White Deer later that year, Roxana moved most of its businesses to the new Skellytown townsite, where the depot was located. Yet Roxana maintained for some time its separate identity as a small industrial village with several loyal residents. By 1930, when the Great Depression stifled the boom, Roxana consisted of four businesses and a population of ten. In 1944 the Roxana post office was discontinued and mail sent to Skellytown. People continued to live in Roxana until the late 1970s.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Arthur Hecht, comp., Postal History in the Texas Panhandle (Canyon, Texas: Panhandle-Plains Historical Society, 1960). Jo Stewart Randel, ed., A Time to Purpose: A Chronicle of Carson County (4 vols., Hereford, Texas: Pioneer, 1966–72). F. Stanley, The Skellytown, Texas, Story (Nazareth, Texas, 1974).
