2024 Wildfire Season: Skellytown TX (Carson Cnty Tx) and the Smokehouse Fire

I was talking to a friend from Texas yesterday, whom I will refer to as S, we were chatting about the Smokehouse Fire. At the time he thought that it had decimated Skellytown, the town where some of ancestors were from, one of his parents was born in Skellytown. Skellytown is in Carson County in the Texas panhandle. S was not born in Skellytown but lived for a few years as a boy.  S told me a couple of hours later that he was mistaken when he said that Skellytown was decimated; saying it was not decimated that Skellytown still stands. He told me a little about Skellytown telling me that in its hay day, the town was an oil town and suggested that I look at the Skellytown webpage in the Texas Almanac to learn more about the town. As soon as I heard from my friend S about his family’s association with Skellytown and the few years he spent there as a boy, I knew that I had to write about Skellytown. S, this post is for you and your family. As an FYI my friend S lives over 500 miles from Skellytown. Before moving on, I want to share a map of the area that I obtained about noon on March 1st from the FIRMS US/CANADA (Fire Resource Management System US/Canada webpage. I went to their "fire map link", zoomed in and capture my screen in a jpeg file to share with you. The small red arrow in the jpeg file is pointing to Skellytown.

obtained from FIRMS US/CANADA on March 1, 2024 at 12:00 PM

I hope you take a few minutes read the Skellytown webpage in the Texas Almanac, it is a quick read and you will learn about Skellytown. Briefly, the town was named for the Skelly Oil Company who had bought up oilfields in and around what later became Skellytown in the 1920s. By 1927 a rail line was in place to the near by town of White Deer (to the south). The town lost some population in the early 1930s declining to 154 before growing again by the mid 1940s with a population of 650. The town was incorporated in 1958, later building sewer and water infrastructure. But the early 1980s there was an elementary school, a fire station, town hall, baseball field, a library and four churches and ten businesses.

I think that the Skellytown Fire Department did great work fighting the fire at Skellytown and I expect that they may still be involved with the fire in someway. I want to point out that S’s Dad served as a volunteer for the Skellytown Fire Department when they were living there in the mid to late 50s and the early 60s, he still has his Dad’s badge. I will let you read what Chief Jacob Clifton (embedded below) had to say in his Facebook post on February 29th. He thanks a lot of first responders who helped along with the Texas Forest Service and many volunteers who donated food and otherwise supported the Skellytown fire firefighters. Please expand the post so you can read it and look at the pictures.

I have the greatest respect and admiration for the Skellytown Fire Department and the local volunteers who assisted them with food and other support services while they were working the fire. Kudos to all.

From looking at the map that I shared from FIRMS, note the fire perimeter in the map is just to the north of Skellytown, also see this map from the Texas A&M Forest Service shared by the Skellytown Fire Department on Facebook.  Hopefully the Smokehouse fire does not burn into Skellytown. At the time that I write this post, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service  (accessed at 1 PM on March 1st) the Smokehouse Fire is at 1,078,086 acres and is at 15 percent containment.