DRIFTWOOD – Cameron County’s connection with one of Hollywood’s
most famous cowboy movie stars is fading.
Tom Mix Birthplace Park and the Museum are gone. The Mix Run
property where the actor and rodeo star was born and spent his
early childhood has been sold and turned into a campground.
Ray Flaugh, who owned the site for more than two decades, has
packed his memorabilia in boxes. Flaugh, a former U.S. Marine, and
his wife Eva tended to the birthplace after purchasing the property
in the 1980s.
In its heyday, the park at Mix Run, about five miles south of
Driftwood, attracted a steady crowd to see Flaugh’s museum
collection, with upwards of 2,000 pictures and others exhibits.
Each year, the Flaughs sponsored a “Tom Mix Roundup,” with mock
shootouts and hangings, western dress-up contests, country music
and Mix look-alike competition.
DuBois, where Mix moved when he was a boy, took over for a few
years before abandoning its own Tom Mix Roundup.
“It’s a shame,” Ray Flaugh said of Mix’s fading Pennsylvania
legacy. “Tom Mix was a good role model.”
Tom Hezikiah Mix was born at Mix Run, the former logging
settlement named for Tom’s great-great-grandfather, on Jan. 6,
1880. In 1888, the family moved to DuBois, where Tom refined his
horse-riding skills in his father’s livery stable.
After seeing Buffalo Bill’s (William F. Cody’s) Wild West Show
in Clearfield, he was struck by the excitement of show
business.
In April 1898, Mix enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he became an
artillery sergeant, but eventually went AWOL. By 1903, he had
drifted to the Oklahoma Territory, working as a hired hand and
eventually entering the motion picture industry.
Mix perfected his own style, adding humor and action to become a
combination whimsical cowboy and ladies’ man. In 1918, he joined
the prestigious William Fox Studios and became America’s top
box-office attraction. John Wayne, Roy Rogers and Ronald Reagan
grew up watching Mix’s movies and patterned their own clean-cut
acting styles on the Mix persona.
Mix wouldn’t let anyone else do his stunts – sharpshooting with
live ammunition, knife-throwing or stunt-riding. He also trained
his own screen horses.
Two of them, “Old Blue” and “Tony,” were nearly as identifiable
as their master.
As silent films gave way to “talkies,” Mix’s image as a leading
man was reinforced as audiences first heard his deep and husky
voice.
He later operated Tom Mix’s Circus and Wild West Show.
On the evening of Oct. 12, 1940, Mix was driving out a desert
road near Tucson, Ariz., and failed to notice warnings that a
bridge had washed out. His car catapulted about 30 feet and
crashed. A metal-hardened suitcase from the rear shelf hurled
forward, hitting him on the back of the head and shattering his
skull.
Soon after his death, Tom Mix Comics and a popular radio show,
the Tom Mix Ralston Straight-Shooters, came out.
His birthplace stood neglected and weed-choked until the Flaughs
purchased the property in 1986. All that remained of the Mix home
was a heap of rocks that had once been part of the foundation.
The Flaughs assembled a collection of classic photos and
artifacts to stock their museum. Money was raised by selling ,10
lifetime memberships, which entitled the bearer to a symbolic
one-inch-square plot of the homestead. Ronald Reagan was one of
more than 4,000 people who purchased memberships.
With the money, the Flaughs rebuilt the Mix house, an outhouse
and a barn.
“It used to be a really big thing,” Flaugh said. “People would
come over from Germany, Japan and other countries. The weekend
roundups were a lot of fun.”
Declining attendance prompted the Flaughs to close the museum in
2002. They hoped for a turnaround for a couple of years, but
eventually accepted a modest offer for the property and handed over
the keys.
“We carried the torch for as long as we can,” Ray Flaugh said.
“Maybe, some day, someone else will come along to help keep Tom
Mix’s memory alive.”
