Order our 125th Anniversary Edition.

Those words from African-American cowboy Matthew “Bones” Hooks sum up the history of the Texas Panhandle’s third oldest town. While Mobeetie and Tascosa scraped out an existence surrounded by the roughest trappings of the Old West, Clarendon’s purpose was to bring civilization to the wilderness.

Many of the territory’s oldest churches are here, Hooks himself helped organize the area’s first black church in Clarendon, the first doctor lived here, and the first college was established here. But before all that, there was the Panhandle’s first newspaper – The Clarendon News.