By Jeremy Gonzalez

Fort Stockton ’ s Oldest House may not draw as many tourists as its famed giant roadrunner , Paisano Pete , but it has recently caught the attention of some Texas Tech students and researchers who want to set the historical record straight .

“ The town lore is that the Oldest House is the oldest building in Fort Stockton , but that hasn ’ t actually been confirmed ,” explained Dr . Tamra Walter , an associate professor of archaeology at Texas Tech University .

The adobe ruins that constitute the Oldest House are located at the corner of W . Sherer and S . Nelson in a residential neighborhood near the south edge of town . Convention holds that it was built between 1855 and 1860 , and that it was the private quarters of J . D . Holiday , the civilian quartermaster in old Camp Stockton . The problem , according to Walter , is that the available historical records don ’ t show just how old the Oldest

House is , so the mystery of its true age is being uncovered through archeological methods .

“ Our goal here ,” she says , “ is to find information about activities that happened outside the buildings , and also determine the

An archeologist sifts through the caliche at the Oldest House .

function of some of these interior rooms . We came to collect data from both inside and outside of the house . Obviously , this was a house that was used again and again and for many different purposes . So what we want to do is get down to the earliest occupation of