our history: CITIES OF PARKER COUNTY PAST - PART 2
“They’ll Be Slipping
Down The Mountain When
— Northwestern Parker County
a favorite launch site for
They Come” summit
incursions into the county
BY MEL W RHODES
F
rom the heights of Slipdown Mountain, rising in the
far northwestern corner of the county, unfriendly
Comanches and Kiowas who’d slipped down across the
Red River with mischief in mind could survey the rolling
country as it swept away south and east and west. It is
said they often planned their dreaded forays into Parker
County from this vantage point, located about 4 miles
southwest of present-day Poolville.
In those days — the 1850s into the 1870s — the view
from Slipdown Mountain was quite different. Where
today there stand expansive swathes of live oak and
cedar, in frontier times, native grassland prairie carpeted
the land, and “one could see for miles in every direction.”
On a fateful day in October 1866, the raiders set their
sights on the Sullivan farm at the eastern edge of Slip-
Bluffs of Slipdown Mountain / Wes Nations
30
down Mountain. These marauders had not entered the
county unnoticed — Texas Ranger Major Joe Borden of
Gibtown in neighboring Jack County had observed the
Comanches riding southwesterly into Parker County, and
he and his two sons sounded the alert. Borden formed a
posse and gave chase, finding the Indians had passed by
the pool at Poolville where they’d stopped long enough
to butcher a cow. But there was no sign of the Coman-
ches.
It was a normal fall day at the Sullivan farm as they’d
yet to hear news of the feathered invaders. Still knowing
the precarious perch settlers sat upon along the frontier,
Margaret Sullivan warned her sons Robert Harvey, 13,
and Thomas Jefferson, 6, to keep a sharp lookout for Indi-
ans. She was off to tend an ill neighbor and left Harvey