Part 1

Texarkana Gun Club- The Early Years
Part 1
By Dennis Shirk

 

When I moved to Texarkana in the fall of 1966, my shooting had been very limited. While living in Trinidad, Colorado, in the mid-fifties, I purchase a Hi-Standard Sentinel 9-shot .22 revolver, which I used for plinking in the mountains near where we lived. Then while in college in Austin, I became acquainted with fellow student who became a life-long friend. We both got into bullseye shooting, since that was the only game in town. At that time, the City of Austin PD had a fifty-yard bullseye range at Zilcker Park, which was open to the public.

When I moved to Texarkana I discovered that there was absolutely no place to shoot. Luckily I met a young man who, like me, was working in Texas City Hall and who was a rifle shooter with no place to shoot. At that time the Texarkana Gun Club existed in name only. There were about a dozen shooters who would meet informally and bemoan the fact that there was no range. For those who might be interested, this group included Leo Bounds, Jr (my friend from City Hall), Bill Rutherford, Cathell Hendricks, “Red” Amos, Sam Spearman, George Kyer, Homer W. Adams, Jr, “Jeep” Henson and others whose names escape me.

During this time many members were searching the area for property suitable to use as a range, even if it meant renting or borrowing property to use on a short-term basis. However, someone discovered the property which was to become our range. I checked with the tax office and discovered that the property was owned by numerous absentee family members and that the taxes were seriously past due. Since I was working in the City Attorney’s Office at the time, I was able to obtain all of the condemnation records from the Corps of Engineers when a portion of the property was condemned as a Borrow Easement for the construction of Highway 67 through the Sulphur River bottoms.

Examination of the records from the Federal Court revealed that the property was owned by approximately 40 descendants of J.F. Hunter and Freeman Hunter, who obtained title to a 50-acre tract and an adjoining 55-acre tract sometime around 1900. Sometime around the time that the Hunters obtained title, a dirt farm road which would eventually become Highway 67 was shown to divide the property roughly in half, running diagonally through the center of the property. Using the information from the Federal Court records,

I obtained names and addresses of forty individual heirs who held an ownership interest in the property, plus two individuals who held a life-estate interest. I then began sending letters to all of the owners who had addresses listed and offered them a very small cash payment for a Deed to their interest in the property, usually from $10.00 to $50.00. While most of the letters were returned undelivered, we did manage to obtain a few Deeds conveying a very small ownership interest in the property. Based on this interest and after payment of some of the delinquent taxes, the Club moved on the property, erected a barb-wire gate, and became naked squatters.