 The picnic was first held in 1884 on the first Saturday of May at the now ghost town of Doans, north of Vernon, Texas.A barbecue lunch and T-shirts are available for sale, and a king and queen are crowned at the event.One of the shirts for 2017 features a design by Harold Dow Bugbee, former curator of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas, which depicts longhorns and a cowboy crossing the Red River at Doan's Crossing.