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White Deer Land Museum

116 S. Cuyler

Pampa, TX 79065

Champion bricklayer Indian Jim paved  downtown Pampa

Museum Mementos

Eloise Lane

White Deer Land Museum

By 1926, Pampa was feeling the results of the oil discovery in neighboring territories.  It had long been known as the town with muddy streets, and it became necessary that something be done.  Eleven of the muddy streets were paved with brick in 1927. 

The champion Indian bricklayer, Jim Brown, was brought to Pampa with the Stucky Construction Company.  The year previous, he had made a world's record by laying 64,644 bricks in seven hours and 48 minutes at Olathe, Kans., on Sept. 12, 1926.

The Indian bricklayer laid nearly all the million and more bricks, and Pampans declared that he worked so fast it kept three men busy hauling the bricks to him, and even then he would sometimes be without bricks.  Some of the original brick paving remains in the business district today.

Indian Jim was born in 1869 on Oneida Reservation in New York, educated at Carlisle and Ontario Agricultural College, was six feet in height and weighed 180 pounds.