Baylor County was separated from Fanin County in February 1858 out of the Young Territory. Its name honors Henry W. Baylor, an Indian fighter and surgeon in a regiment of Texas Rangers during the Mexican War. The county was not organized, however, until 1879. The depletion of the buffalo herds in the mid-1870s and the defeat of the Comanche in 1874 by the US Army opened the county for settlement. It became a major supply area for the Western Trail, and the population and economy boomed. The legacy of the Western Trail was historic ranches and a cattle industry that became the cornerstone of...