Founded in the mid 1860's, Dexter was the last stop for travelers headed up to Oklahoma before crossing the Red River. It was quite the wild town with 2 hotels and somewhere between 4 and 8 bars. Outlaws on the run were common in the town as they headed north. But in the early 1900's the railroad went through Gainesville Texas instead of Dexter and it immediatly began to drift into history. Now there are just a handfull of people still living in the area. There is a church which is still in use and a few farm houses. The Dexter grave yard is at the intersection and has graves dating back to the towns beginings. There are a few vacant lots where the bank and bars used to sit. The remains of the last standing hotel can still be seen. It caved in this last year (2000). I had the privilege to enter it before it fell. Those who enjoy metal detecting have turned up everything from musket rounds to a confederate soldier belt buckle. Just shadows of the excitement the town held in its past. Submitted by: Thorpe

 Dexter was a thriving community across the Red river from Indian Territory when my father Frank Leslie Carter was born there in 1887.  People could cross the river on a raft-like ferryboat, which in the '30s could hold one car at a time.  When the railroad came through nearby Woodbine in the late 1880s,  Dexter dried up.  My father said, "Woodpeckers ate up the schoolhouse."  From the late 1960s to 1970s approx. 70 people lived around Dexter.  Annual reunions on July 4th met for a jolly picnic in a pasture.  The old hotel was still there, looking like an old Western movie set.  The general store stayed open for bread and milk for the occasional farmer's pickup that drove past.  It still had shelves stocked with lamp chimneys, bolts of ribbon, horse collars, and an old human skull sitting in an upstairs window.  Dexter was written up in "The first 100 Years in Cooke County", by A. Morton Smith (my father's cousin and former editor of the Gainesville Register.)  In 2000 the population ws 18.

Submitted by: Lou Carter Keay

Community Center
Courtesy Thorpe

Church
Courtesy Thorpe

Hotel
Courtesy Thorpe

Barber Shop
Courtesy Thorpe