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O.K. McDonald was born January 31, 1880, in Coryell County. When he was 12 years old, his family moved to Tow Valley, near the west bank of the Colorado River, in Llano County. He started a journal in 1964, recording his memories for posterity. His daughter Ida Zula McDonald Faris, who edited the journal, had this disclaimer for readers: “This journal should be read with the knowledge that it is his memories when he was older, and has been published intact with no attempt to verify or correct names dates, places and facts.” We are summarizing parts of the journal, confident that Mr. McDonald’s memory was largely accurate, to give modern-day readers a glimpse into a fascinating bygone era in the Texas Hill Country. We want to thank Ina Faris Davis for lending us her copy of the book. Tow Valley, Texas, lies in the northeastern part of Llano County. It is surrounded by beautiful mountains. I am presenting this short history as I wish to tell future generations of the early pioneer families who laid the foundation for peace and order. The first settlers came in 1852 in covered wagons, and drove the Indians out. Among the first settlers were the Tow, Morgan, Thorp and Cowan families. The Tow and Morgan families camped first at a salt lick south of Tow Valley, where Gideon Thorp and David Cowan manufactured salt by boiling the brackish water in large iron kettles. They had cut a road through to Fredericksburg, where they sold 100 pounds of salt for $4. While the women rested from their journey and got their washing done, the men scouted the foothills to the north, and found beautiful springs with sparkling water. They decided to settle near Fall Creek, which flowed through the valley before dropping 110 feet into the Colorado River on the east side of the valley. The families cut post oak and cedar logs to build houses, with chimneys of native stone held together by a “mortar” made from ashes and sand. They built smokehouses to take care of their meat, and small stockpens for horses and milk-cows. The open range was perfect for raising hogs, and wild game was abundant. Also, the woods were filled with wild bees, the hunting of which provided lots of honey and good “sport.” To provide bread (at first), men would cut cedar posts and haul them to Austin to trade for corn. Soon they had small fields cleared, and grew plenty of corn and other commodities. Women had spinning wheels to spin thread for clothing. They also made their own soap. Most people would rise at 4 a.m. to feed and milk the cows before breakfast, then went to work in the fields. They would eat their dinner around 11 a.m., then rest a while before going back to work. In the evenings, neighbors got together for singings, parties and dances. It wasn’t long before new settlers arrived and built a log schoolhouse, a country store, a blacksmith shop and a cotton gin. Churches were organized, and camp meetings would be held which sometimes lasted thirty days! A ferry boat carried people across the Colorado River. One time when the river was high, the cable broke and the ferry went down the river. The operator’s son, Dud Davis, swam to the bank with a rope, tying it to a tree to save the boat and its passengers from destruction. My father, Dr. R.D. McDonald, retired from medical practice in 1891 and came to Tow Valley with about 75 head of cattle. I was just twelve years old at the time, but I was a pretty good cowboy with a real nice bay mare called Mat. Sometimes I’d get lost looking for cattle on the open range; I just had to throw the reins down and let old Mat bring me home.(Editor’s note: the McDonalds happened to be coming through Llano, on the way to Tow, the very day that the old courthouse burned in 1892.)

Before the first post office came to Tow in 1895, people got their mail at Bluffton, a boisterous cowboy town about five miles downstream on the Colorado River. Most all of the older women smoked a pipe – a Henry Clay pipe or a cob pipe. They also enjoyed the old Levi Garrett snuff. Most of the men chewed tobacco. In those days it took ten yards of cloth to make a woman’s dress, and all the girls and women wore bonnets. We boys never did see a girl’s legs above her ankles; we just had to guess what they looked like. None of the houses had screen doors or screens over the windows; if the mosquitoes would bother, we would build a smoke to keep them off. We used newspapers to paper the walls, coal oil lights and wood cook stoves. It was not hard to make a living, but everyone worked hard: men looked after most of the outside work, but sometimes when the women were done with all their chores, they would help with the men’s work. Girls often picked cotton, gathered corn or plowed the fields. The nearest trading posts were in Llano, Lampasas and Burnet, but it was a two-day trip, so men would pay 25 cents to put up the horses in the wagon-yard and sleep in the bunkhouse. You could get a bed in the Keystone Hotel (in Lampasas) for 50 cents. I remember being in Lampasas when the street cars were operating and they had horse-drawn fire wagons. Lampasas wasn’t as large as it is today, but it was a main trading center. Large stores were Barnes and Higdon or Stokes Brothers; Jerry White was an early day banker at People’s National Bank. I attended school in Tow Valley until I was eighteen years old, then went to work on the Green Ranch at $13 a month. When I was twenty years old, I went to West Texas and worked on the Bill Lofton ranch for $20 a month. In 1902 I came back to Tow and went to work at the Tow Valley Store, which was owned by Dr. B. Stephens. My father took sick and died in 1903, at the age of 58. When he was buried, they had to drag me away from his grave. He was both father and mother to me, as I lost my mother when I was four years old. In 1904, I was married to Zula Wood; she was 18 and I was 24. We continued to work at the store for Dr. Stephens, and when his wife died, we moved into his house and cared for him. Just before he died, only 30 days later, he sold the store and one acre of land to me for $2,100. The old country stores were quite different from today’s modern stores. We sold supplies on credit to farmers until they gathered their crops in the Fall. The largest account we would run would be from $50 to $100; we lost no more than $500 in the thirty-nine years we ran the store. We handled dry goods, hardware, drugs and groceries, but people raised most of their own food and we knew nothing about many new items on the market. We sold canned peaches, salmon, and sardines; Old Rat cheese came in 30-pound cartons; there was baking powder and soda. We bought coffee in 300-pound sacks and sold nine pounds for $1; the first packaged coffee on the market was Arbuckle’s 1-pound bag. We bought snuff in 48-bottle cases, five cases at a time; it sold for 20-25 cents a bottle. Hanging up around the top of the store walls were buckets, tubs, horse collars and pads, and many other items. We had plow points, sweeps, shovels, nails, staples, axes, hammers, anything a farmer would need. On a platform in back of the store, we sold Tow Valley sorghum molasses from 50-gallon barrels for 35 cents a gallon. Our freight came from Austin to the train depot at Llano, and we hauled it by wagon the eighteen miles to Tow. There were seventeen gates to open along the route. Later on, when cars and trucks came in, we bought a truck. Tow Valley was on the route for numerous cattle drives; the largest herd I ever saw was when Jim Ramsey drove 4,000 head through Tow Valley, forded the Colorado River, and went on to Lampasas, where he shipped them to market. On one of those cattle drives, my wife and son were in the house behind a quilting frame when a cow came through the front door. One of the cowhands told Zula to be very still, and she held baby Carl so he wouldn’t cry. The cowhands were able to drive the cow out the back door without any trouble! The first telephone at Tow Valley was about 1900; a man named Dave Martin built a line from Llano through Lone Grove to Tow. There was a switchboard in both towns, and he charged $35 for 12 months of service. That system lasted until 1918. I owned the first car in Tow Valley; it was a second-hand Model T. In 1915, I traded for a 1912 Cadillac. It had Presto lights; there was a small tank that held fluid for the lights, and when it got dark you would strike a match, walk around, and light the lights. The Depression hit Tow pretty hard, and it was impossible to find a job in the early thirties. Quite a few people moved away from Tow, and by the time Buchanan Dam was built, about all that was left was the old store. When the lake began filling up, we moved our store to a new building on the new road. It didn’t take long for the lake to fill. All the fine land and pecan orchards were covered up; the houses that hadn’t been moved were washed down the river. It was really something to see houses floating down the middle of the Colorado River. After the dam was completed and the lake was full, there was a lot of work around the lake. People started building houses and fishing camps; land sold for ten and twenty dollars an acre. We still had the store and the post office, and the few old-timers who were left enjoyed sitting on the porch to talk while waiting for their mail. Lots of tall tales were told while they rested there from their farming. We sold the store in 1943 and moved up to the old Joe Morgan place. We had about thirty head of cattle, some goats and some hogs. We sold the ranch in 1949 and moved to Lampasas. I have worked hard all my life, and never made a great deal of money, but we never went hungry, and my wife and I raised six children in a happy home. I think I had one of the most wonderful wives in the whole world; we worked side by side for 54 years and 16 days. I have discovered that I am not a history writer, but I hope you will enjoy a part of this book. May God bless and take care of you all. O.K. McDonald