The Odessa Record - Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!

REARDAN - On the morning of Aug. 3, 1926, two sisters, Amy and Myrtle Shipman, telephone operators for the Interstate Telephone Company and daughters of the owners of the Inland Hotel in Reardan where they were living, were awakened by the crackling sounds of fire.

They quickly raised the alarm.

The fire destroyed the two-story brick building known as the Bowie Block where the fire started. It housed Hanel's Pioneer Drug Store and Sherman S. Bentley's General Store on the first floor and rooms on the second floor that housed dentists, lawyers and the Masons and Eastern Star lodges. It also...