Shown here is the front page of the Mineral Wells "Index", featuring a picture of Judge Alvin Lynch, astride a mule and holding a large bottle of the Mineral Wells water. The picture is not sufficiently in focus to read a reliable date to the newspaper, except perhaps to discern that the issue comes from "Volume VIII". We are accustomed to having a newspaper printed with the help of electricity. However, the "Index" of 1940 states that such was not always the case. "Employees of the Index", is said, "Can remember back in the old days when the electric service was rather questionable, especially at night--and it was the custom to put the press boy up on the feeder of the newspaper press, tie an electric cord around his neck,and let him go to sleep. When the power came on the bulb would get hot and wake him up--then he would round up the printers and they would get back to work." All this was in keeping with electricity that consisted of "[A] single drop cord in each room and on the end of it a 32 candle power light globe."
A note on back of this photograph states, "1902, 1st Boy Scouts in Mineral Wells, organized by Frank Creighton (L) met in old Sangcura Sprudel Well Pavilion." The picture was taken in front of Green's Transfer Building. This photograph possibly shows the youth division of a local lodge, probably Shriners. Please note that the boys shown in the picture are shouldering real rifles. The uniforms depicted look more like Zouaves (down to the fezzes that the boys are shown wearing) than Boy Scouts, while the adult frowning on the extreme left has a sword in his hand. This historic photograph captures a precursor to the Boy Scout movement, that started six years later in England. It spread to America in 1910 to generate an interest in outdoor and educational activities among teen-age boys. The first Boy Scout Troop was organized in 1914 by a Mr. Harris. World War I delayed any further development until L.H. Gross got things underway again. He served a Scoutmaster until 1925.
A street scene, identified as Mesquite Street (now NE 1st Avenue)and looking south, taken at the turn of the twentieth century, shows businesses that antedate the coming of the automobile. On the right, in the middle of the picture, the Yeager Building is shown with a stone lion mounted on its roof. Many historians now refer to this building as the Lion Drug Store. However, current Yeager descendants now living in Mineral Wells do not remember the store as ever being named anything but The Yeager Drug Store. The third building on the left (with the spire on top) was the Star Well whose manager, Frank Richards was an active participant in Mineral Wells' early business and social activities. At the end of the street is Mineral Wells depot built in 1902. Absence of the "Dinky Car" tracks in the middle of the street indicates that the picture was taken prior to the building of the Mineral Wells Lakewood Park Scenic Railway in 1905.
This rock structure is now [2008] a museum dedicated to the preservation of the history of the city. There was some construction around the school at the time of this photograph, probably due to the building of Mineral Wells' first high school, the West Ward School, on the same lot, next door to and north of the little Rock School in 1902.
A newspaper clipping with a photograph of a Mineral Wells School. This clipping had been mounted in a scrapbook, and the legible portion of the caption says, "Mineral Wells School, Texas." The whole caption read: Mineral Wells College. [sic]--A School for Both Sexes The building, which the Weatherford Democrat of September 12, 1895 says would be built in Mineral Wells (It would have been in Romanesque architecture), was to offer "Classical, Scientific, English, Music, Elocution, and Art Courses" . Professor J. McCracken was the head of the school. The building was never built, because the state provided education up to (but not including) college. A need for further education was not felt. .
This photograph illustrates a view from the east of the West Ward School at the time of its completion in 1902. It was located just north of Mineral Well's first public school, the "Little Rock School", at 205 NW 5th Avenue. West Ward housed first through twelfth grades. Mineral Well's first high school graduating class (four students) graduated from here in 1905. High School classes were moved from here to the East Ward School when it was completed in 1906. Only elementary school classes were taught here at the time West Ward school was torn down, about 1930. The Lilian Peek Cottage, Texas' first free-standing Home Economics building, was built by the W.P.A. in 1937 just to the north of where the West Ward School had been located.
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