Oscar H. Loyd was Oldham County's first physician and a civic leader, weather researcher, and humanitarian. Born in Kansas, he attended medical school in Missouri and in 1907 moved to Vega with his wife, Lulu Mills Loyd. Despite opposition from ranchers, he introduced farming to the area, broke sod with the county's first steam tractor, and exhibited the county's best produce first at the Tri-State Fair in Amarillo, which he helped organize, and then at state fairs in Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Texas. A volunteer weather observer for more than 30 years, he telephoned daily reports at his own expense to the Amarillo Weather Bureau, and his weather notes are now in the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon. To make sick calls, he bought a Maxwell, the first automobile in the county. During the 1918 flu epidemic, he cared for the sick day and night, dispensed food, and buried the dead. He organized the county's first Chamber of Commerce and a baseball team that he transported to its games, actively sponsored the original Highway 66 Association, and left his estate to religious and charitable groups in the county.