Gaines County 1

QUANAH PARKER TRAIL

Seminole, Texas

CEDAR LAKE

MONUMENT ERECTED 1936

BY THE STATE OF TEXAS

An old photograph that hangs in the Gaines County Museum shows Quanah Parker and two other men on horseback.

TEXAS

Seminole

Quanah Parker’s

birthplace?

OR LAGUNA SABINAS. Largest Alkali Lake on Plains; old Indian camp and burial site; birthplace of Quanah Parker. A skirmish between Indians and United States Cavalry under command of Lieutenant John L. Bullis took place here in October, 1875.

The Cedar Lake/Lagunas Sabinas historical marker is on private land, 26 miles northeast of Seminole. Whether the assertion is correct that Quanah Parker was born at Cedar Lake, the legend is carved in stone at the site.

The museum legend posted with the photograph identifies the man with the pipe as E. W. Gray of Great Britain and the other white man as Ike Pickering, a lifelong friend of Quanah Parker and the uncle of L. M. “Soapy” Walker of Greenville, Texas, who donated the photograph from the collection of his mother, Mrs. M. B. Walker, a Gaines County pioneer. Names handwritten on the back of the photograph correspond with those identities except the man on the left is identified instead as “J. B. MR. GRAY.” Date and place of the photograph are unknown.