Parker County Today August 2017 | Page 50

our history: PLACES IN PARKER COUNTY’S PAST (part 4) From Vanished Agricola to Barely Remembered Buck Naked BY MEL W RHODES A rough place to eke out a living while keep- ing your hair intact and your family safe, frontier Texas challenged Anglo settlers who arrived to find not a promised land but a place with some rather hellish qualities. The violence and sheer barbarity at times caused all but the strongest to falter. Periodically the “Indian Trouble” drove back the frontier as settlers grabbed what they could and skedaddled to the relative safety of the more easterly Texas settle- ments. Parker and its neighboring counties in the Western Cross Timbers lay in a volatile zone where cultures collided and spa rks flew. 48