The Texas Panhandle and South Plains region corresponds to the Llano Estacado, or “Staked Plains,” a vast, level, treeless grassland bounded on the north by the Canadian River, stretching into eastern New Mexico and western Oklahoma, merging with the western Great Plains...
The Amarillo town site was surveyed in 1887 on the Fort Worth and Denver City (FW&DC) Railway. The site was near a lake for water supply but was moved a mile east a year later to higher ground. By 1890 the town was one of the world’s busiest cattle-...
The broken topography and rolling terrain north of the Canadian River contrast with that of the Llano Estacado to the river’s south. A Texas state historical marker notes the site of Old Tascosa, a cattle shipping and supply point for the large ranches...
Settlement at Channing began in 1888 as the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway (FW&DC) built through Hartley County, and Channing became the general headquarters for the XIT Ranch, with ranch warehouses, two lumberyards, two general stores, a school, and a...
The most northwestern county seat in Texas, Dalhart was founded in 1901 when the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad crossed the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway at the line between Dallam and Hartley counties (hence Dalhart). It became a major cattle-...
Although founded in 1891 as a farming community, the town never grew to more than two hundred people until oil and natural gas were discovered nearby in 1926. In 1931 railroad service arrived. The sudden burst of prosperity was demonstrated by the construction of a...
Borger was founded and incorporated in 1926, just in time to profit from the discovery of oil in Hutchinson County. The town is named for oilman and land developer A. P. Borger. Whereas Pampa, an established cattle town, prospered from the oil boom...
One of the newest towns in the Panhandle, Spearman was platted in 1917 in anticipation of service by the North Texas and Santa Fe Railway, which began in 1919. In 1929 Spearman became the county seat of Hansford County, defeating Hansford in an election....
One of the oldest towns in the Panhandle, Canadian was founded in 1887 on the south bank of the Canadian River, from which it takes its name. By 1900, the town had become a major regional entrepôt and railroad division headquarters. It is one of the rare hill...
Founded as a station on the Southern Kansas Railway, Pampa was selected as headquarters by the Francklyn Land and Cattle Company in 1887 and, at the railroad’s invitation, was named by company manager George Tyng for the region’s physical affinity to the pampas of...
Panhandle (earlier known as Carson City and Panhandle City) was platted in 1888 as the terminus of the Southern Kansas Railway, but it was not incorporated until 1909. It lost business to Amarillo, thirty miles west, between these dates, when the Fort Worth and...
Paducah, named for Paducah, Kentucky, became the county seat of Cottle County in 1892 and obtained railroad service in 1909. The county was formed in 1876 and named for George Washington Cottle, one of the thirty-two volunteers who reinforced the Alamo just before...
Known as the “Gateway to the Panhandle” due to its location on the south side of the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River, Childress became the county seat with the arrival of the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway in 1887. It differs from the customary...
Founded in 1878 as a Christian colony by the Reverend Lewis Henry Carhart, a Methodist minister, Clarendon was relocated in 1887 to a new site on the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway line. The town became a division point for the railroad and an...
The site of Canyon, also known as Canyon City, was settled in 1887 and the town surveyed in 1889, but it did not flourish until the Pecos and North Texas Railway arrived in 1898. The arrival of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in 1907 led to the founding...
The county was named for Erastus “Deaf” Smith, who came to Mexican Texas in 1821 and served as a scout and spy during the Texas Revolution, including service at the Battle of San Jacinto. Hereford was founded in 1899 when the Pecos and North Texas Railway was...
Littlefield was founded by George W. Littlefield of Austin, a cattleman and banker who purchased the Yellow Horse Division of the XIT Ranch in 1901. In 1912 he established the Littlefield Lands Company to sell off part of the property for farming. Littlefield...
Initially named Hockley City, the town was renamed in 1922 to acknowledge the prevailing topography. It was laid out in 1914 by C. W. Post, founder of Post Cereals, who also founded the town of Post, seventy miles to the southeast. Levelland became the seat of...
Post was founded as Post City in 1907 by breakfast cereal magnate Charles William Post as a company town with the goal of fostering agricultural development in the South Plains. The Pecos and Northern Texas Railway arrived in 1910, and in 1914 the town’s name was...
Lubbock was founded in 1890 when two competing communities on opposite sides of Yellow House Canyon, Old Lubbock and Monterey, merged and relocated. In 1909 Lubbock received rail connections to the Pecos and Northern Texas Railway. That same year it was...
The town of Ransom Canyon is in Yellowhouse Canyon on the last portion of the 100,000-acre Johnston Ranch. The name derives from Cañon de Rescate, “ Canyon of Rescue,” where captives were traded from the Indians. A series of dams form artificial...
Sweetwater is named for Sweetwater Creek, a campsite for buffalo hunters in the 1870s. The Texas and Pacific (T&P) Railway reached Sweetwater in 1881, but the town’s progress was retarded by the blizzards and droughts of the 1880s that devastated...
As its name suggests, Big Spring originated at a spring in a gorge of the Caprock Escarpment. The spring was frequented by overland explorers, cattle drovers, and squatters, but it only achieved a degree of prosperity when the Texas and Pacific Railway built...
The landscape between Big Spring and Andrews changes from agricultural fields irrigated by radial sprinklers to grids of pump jacks that mark the northern edge of the great Permian Basin oil country. Although Andrews was founded in 1910, it was not incorporated...
Lamesa (in Spanish, “the table,” here referencing the town area’s topography) was platted in 1903 and became the seat of Dawson County in 1905. Downtown Lamesa is focused on the courthouse, a cubic, reddish brown brick building of two floors elevated on...
At the 100th meridian, roughly in line with San Angelo, Junction, and Eagle Pass, the yearly average rainfall is 24 inches. At the 106th meridian near El Paso, it is only around 9 inches. The area in between, 400 miles and half the width of Texas, has been shaped for millennia by a...
The United States Army, cattle, oil, and the wool trade combine to make San Angelo and its area thrive today. The army set up detachments at Camp J. E. Johnston and Fort Chadbourne (both in 1852), and Camp Hatch was established at the confluence of the North...
Paint Rock takes its name from the pictographs (SS33) discovered in cliffs above the Concho River. The mission of San Clemente was established here in 1684 but abandoned after a few months due to Apache raids. The Texas legislature formed Concho County in 1858,...
Named for Michel B. Ménard, founder of Galveston, Menard County was created in 1858, and Menard (first known as Menardville) was established the same year when three families built a log palisade around their cabins. An irrigation system (SS35) to...
The Camino Real de los Tejas, which led from Saltillo, the state capital of Coahuila, to Villa de Béjar (San Antonio), crossed the Rio Grande at a ford at the confluence of the Rio Grande and the Río Escondido. Spanish explorers in the seventeenth century,...
