Double Tanks

Double Tanks is on the Wood Ranch a half mile east of U.S. Highway 277 and ten miles southwest of Carta Valley in northeastern Val Verde County. It was founded in the early 1880s by R. L. Crouch, a rancher who constructed two tanks to supply water for his livestock and to offer water to travelers, emigrants, and temporary settlers. Many wayfarers stopped at Double Tanks to rest under the large oaks and to use the abundant water. In 1898 one of those visitors, Robert Kuntz of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma, decided to take advantage of the fertile black soil and lush grass around Double Tanks. Believing he had found the ideal site for homesteading, Kuntz sent news of it to his friend W. W. Riggs, who brought his family to Double Tanks in 1900. Several families had arrived earlier, among them the Galloways and the Carters. In 1901 the settlers established a school with Riggs as teacher, and by 1903 more than twelve new families had come to the settlement. The campsite at Double Tanks became a community of homesteaders, living in wagons, cabins, shacks, tents, and lean-tos. In 1905 Joseph Alexander Foster, a Methodist missionary, organized a church at Double Tanks. By 1908 many homesteaders had left Double Tanks for permanent homes in or near Carta Valley, in western Edwards County. By the late 1970s only two dirt tanks surrounded by tall oak trees remained at the site.