George Eder, his wells and ‘Buckskin Joe’ are why Fort Worth has Ederville Road today

If you are familiar with the East Side, you probably are familiar with Ederville Road and Handley Ederville Road.

George Eder was born in Pennsylvania in 1810. About 1871, Eder moved to Tarrant County, where he bought a farm about a mile north of today’s Handley area. One day he dug a well and discovered that the water therein had a healthful mineral content. He dug more wells. Same result. Word spread. People began to come to the wells to “take the waters” at “Eder’s Wells.” A hotel was built to accommodate them. The hotel had two stories, 14 rooms and separate mineral water baths for men and women.

Enter Joseph S. “Buckskin Joe” Works, who wore his hair long and dressed in a buckskin shirt. Works was a “professional booster,” an entrepreneur who traveled around “colonizing” settlements during the late 19th century as railroads spread and as states such as Texas and Oklahoma were settled by immigrants.

Buckskin Joe’s MO was to acquire land, lay out a town site and promote sales of lots in the new town with his printed immigrant guides and train excursions from big cities.

Buckskin Joe had been given 90 acres of land near George Eder’s farm in return for helping to establish colonies along the right-of-way of the Fort Worth & Denver City railroad. Buckskin Joe looked at Eder’s mineral water wells and the thriving hotel and felt they deserved their own town.

So, about 1882, Works platted his 90 acres, began selling lots and named his settlement “Ederville” to capitalize on the name recognition of George Eder’s popular mineral water.

In turn, the hotel took the name of Buckskin Joe’s new settlement. Ederville was located about where East Loop 820 and Interstate 30 intersect today.

In 1975, former Ederville resident Johnnie Lilla Farrell (born 1902) recalled the settlement: “George Eder dug the [first] well about 1875. The water was drawn from the wells by hand, heated, and mudpacks made. The deepest well produced a pound of crystals for every nine gallons of water. ... I’ve heard my mother say that people would come and stay in tents for treatment of arthritis, that she saw them get up and walk away.”

In addition to the hotel, Farrell recalled, Ederville, in its prime, had a nine-grade school, pavilion, skating rink, post office (Buckskin Joe was postmaster), blacksmith, saloon, church and drugstore.

George Eder died in 1896.

Eder was gone, but his namesake community lived on. Johnnie Lilla Farrell recalled that “Ederville was a popular place in the 1890s.”

By 1904 the Ederville Mineral Wells Company was advertising the “Ederville water cure” and the Ederville Hotel and offering to deliver water to Fort Worth.

But Farrell recalled that Ederville “went downhill after 1913.”

In 1915, Ederville got a “new summer resort” and a new pavilion. But the revival was short-lived.

When George Eder’s healthful wells dried up, so did Ederville’s raison d’etre.

In 1955, Fort Worth annexed Ederville as the turnpike (I-30 today) was being planned.

The name of George Eder lives on in Ederville Road and Handley Ederville Road. He is buried in the cemetery named for the other man in “Handley Ederville Road” — Maj. James Madison Handley.

And what about Buckskin Joe Works? His name, too, lives on. Two blocks south of Ederville Road, where the Ederville community once stood, is Works Street.

Mike Nichols blogs about Fort Worth history at www.hometownbyhandlebar.com.