SWEARINGEN, TEXAS. Swearingen is on Farm Road 104 and the Burlington Northern Railroad fourteen miles northeast of Paducah in northeast Cottle County. The town was established about 1908 as headquarters and trading center for the OX Ranchqv and named for ranch owner D. D. Swearingen. The original plan called for 600 city lots. Early postmaster George W. Hare bought the townsite and established a drugstore. Aided by OX business and local trade, the town proved to be an instant success. By 1911 businesses included a post office, a bank, stables, a hardware store, a gin, a lumberyard, a Presbyterian church, an apothecary shop, several general stores, and the Comanche Hotel. A school, begun in 1908, met in the church until a building was built in 1913. One of the great events of the town was the Cowboy Reunion of 1910, which attracted many early settlers.
Although a post office occupied the site as early as 1898, it gave only intermittent service until 1910, when it was run by Robert Richmond, the first postmaster. In 1911 the postmaster was George Hare. The post office was discontinued in August 1954. By 1913 the town had become a shipping point on the new Quanah, Acme and Pacific Railroad. Although two major fires that year destroyed many businesses, the settlement continued to be a trading center for area ranches, but it began to decline with the breakup of the OX Ranch after 1930. The school was still functioning in 1933 but had been discontinued by 1940, when the town had 115 residents and one store. By 1970 only several houses and a cemetery remained. County maps of 1980 gave the location of the Swearingen community, although no businesses were evident.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Ed Ellsworth Bartholomew, The Encyclopedia of Texas Ghost Towns (Fort Davis, Texas, 1982). Carmen Taylor Bennett, Our Roots Grow Deep: A History of Cottle County (Floydada, Texas: Blanco Offset Printing, 1970). Jim Wheat, More Ghost Towns of Texas (Garland, Texas: Lost and Found, 1971).
Charles G. Davis
