The Courthouse Survived the Flood That Ended Ben Ficklin

Ben Ficklin had just finished a two-story stone courthouse when the water came. The town had served as Tom Green County's seat since 1875 and stood on the east bank of the South Concho River, about five miles south of Fort Concho. It grew from a mail station into a community of roughly 600 people, with stores, a hotel, a school, a jail, and county offices.

Heavy rain fell on August 23, 1882, after an already wet summer. Dove Creek, Spring Creek, the Middle Concho, and the South Concho all rose. Their combined flood reached Ben Ficklin the next morning. On the flat, the new courthouse, the jail, and two houses remained standing. Sixty-five people drowned.

The county and post offices moved to San Angela after the disaster. In 1883, that town became the county seat under the name San Angelo. Some Ben Ficklin survivors moved there for jobs and free homesites; others went to Sherwood. The flood did not erase every trace of the old town, but it ended its civic future in one morning.

The cemetery carries the hardest remnant. A Texas Historical Commission marker says the flood washed through the earlier burial ground and exposed graves. The surviving cemetery above the river holds flood victims and people reinterred after the water receded.