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Show Town Vanishes in Four Short Years Streets Where Business Once Teemed Now Deserted. Leeray, Tex. Four years ago Lee-ray Lee-ray had 10,000 Inhabitants, boasted of theaters, banks, hotels, dance halls, churches, schools and a chamber of commerce. Now It has only broken windows In the few deserted buildings left standing on silent streets. The boom came in 1920 with the discovery of oil. Leeray was just open prairie then, but within six months there grew a city, pulsating with the colorful, vivid life that marks every oil town. Within a year salt water flowed into the wells and none of them turned out big producers. The Inhabitants In-habitants departed almost as suddenly as they came, many tearing down buildings and shipping the material and others hauling buildings overland to new locations. Postmistress on Job. But Leeray lived while it lived. It had its full share of exciting times, with more melodrama than routine. But all the actors have gone. All but one. Mrs. Ella Meeks, postmistress, is still here. Mrs. Meeks runs the post office and a little store, which serves the station agent and about 50 farmer folks near by, most of whom were there before Leeray flourished. Leeray still possesses one feature of which no other town may bo'ist. Ray lee is the post-office name. It lies midway between Cisco and Brecken-ridge, Brecken-ridge, in a bowl between two mountain moun-tain ranges, and the townsite has an altitude of nearly 1.S00 feet. f However, Mrs. Meeks is optimistic. She still boosts for Leeray. She pictures pic-tures for it a rosy future. "Just look at this beautiful town-site. town-site. Did you ever see a better?" she asks. "We have the mountains close by and an elevation of 1,800 feet. We have a railroad, good water and natural nat-ural gas. This would make an ideal place for a hospital. It is a great cattle and poultry-producing country. Right now I am In on a scheme for getting settlers from Florida and R. Q. Lee of Cisco is planning to bring in poultry people from the North and establish the bggest poultry plant in the Southwest. Can't Give Lots Away, "Seven hundred acres already have been obtained for it, and we want 300 more. In the big days Leeray once had a chamber of commerce dinner that I attended, and they discussed big things for the city. Well, I haven't given up yet. The oil men said that the old residents were too penurious in charges for pipe lines and leases and for labor. They said that it was that killed the town. "Business lots on Main street once sold for $2,000 and now you can't give them away, but that won't last. Talk about healthy climate. Why, we had only two natural deaths In four years and the physicians were the first to1 begin to leave." Six wells at Leeray are still producing, pro-ducing, but they are small affairs, yielding from six to ten barrels daily. From the doorway of her little un-painted un-painted store where she resides and boosts, Mrs. Meeks looks out upon the 1 alace hotel, a brick structure, whose windows are broken and which now Is silent. Debris marks the site of former for-mer buildings along the street. |