About Carson County
Carson County, Texas, in the center of
the Panhandle and on the eastern edge of the Texas High
Plains, is bounded on the north by Hutchinson County, on
the west by Potter County, on the south by Armstrong
County, and on the east by Gray County. Carson County was
named for Samuel P. Carson, the first secretary of state
of the Republic of Texas. The center of the county lies
at roughly 35°25' north latitude and 101°22' west
longitude. The county occupies 900 square miles of level
to rolling prairies surfaced by dark clay and loam that
make the county almost completely tillable and
productive. Native grasses and various crops such as
wheat, oats, barley, grain sorghums, and corn flourish.
The huge Ogallala Aquifer beneath the surface provides
water for people, crops, and livestock. Trees, usually
cottonwood, oak, or elm, appear, along with mesquite, in
the county's creekbottoms. Antelope and Dixon creeks,
both intermittent streams, run northward from central
Carson County to their mouths on the Canadian River in
Hutchinson County. McClellan Creek, also intermittent,
runs eastward across the southeastern corner of the
county to join the Red River. Carson County ranges from
3,200 to 3,500 feet in elevation, averages 20.92 inches
of rain per year, and varies in temperature from a
minimum average of 21° F in January to a maximum average
of 93° in July. The growing season averages 191 days a
year.
Prehistoric hunters first occupied the area, and then the
Plains Apaches arrived. Modern Apaches followed them and
were displaced by Comanches, who dominated the region
until the 1870s. Spanish exploring parties, including
those of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado in the 1540s and
Juan de Oñate in the early 1600s, crisscrossed the Texas
Panhandle, but it is not known if they traversed Carson
County. American buffalo hunters penetrated the Panhandle
in the early 1870s as they slaughtered the great southern
herd. The ensuing Indian wars, culminated by the Red
River War of 1874, led to the extermination of the
buffalo and the removal of the Comanches to Indian
Territory. The Panhandle was thus opened to settlement.
Carson County was established in 1876, when its territory
was marked off from the Bexar District.
Ranchers appeared in Carson County in the early 1880s.
The JA Ranch of Charles Goodnight and John G. Adairq and
the Turkey Track Ranch both grazed large ranges in Carson
County by 1880. In 1882 Charles G. Francklyn purchased
637,440 acres of railroad lands in Gray, Carson,
Hutchinson, and Roberts counties, 281,000 of them in
Carson County. The newly formed Francklyn Land and Cattle
Company, with B. B. Groom as manager, attempted to ranch
and farm on a large scale, but failed. The lands of the
Francklyn Company were sold to the White Deer Lands Trust
of British bondholders in 1886 and 1887.
In the later 1880s the railroads reached Carson County.
By 1886 the Southern Kansas Railway, a subsidiary of the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, had built from Kiowa,
Kansas, to the Texas-Indian Territory border. The
Southern Kansas of Texas Railway was formed to extend the
line into Texas. Panhandle City, a temporary railhead,
was founded in 1887 in anticipation of the railroad line,
which finally reached the town in 1888. The town grew,
and its occupants hoped that another rail line, the Fort
Worth and Denver City, which was building from Fort Worth
across the Panhandle to Colorado, would pass through
their city. As it happened, the Fort Worth and Denver
City missed Panhandle City by fourteen miles to the
south, just touching the southwestern corner of the
county. In 1889 the two lines were finally linked by a
fourteen-mile span between Panhandle City and Washburn, a
station on the Fort Worth and Denver City. By 1890 Carson
County had a rail network, and its first town, soon known
simply as Panhandle; that year, the United States census
listed twenty-eight ranches or farms in the area, and 356
people were living in the county, all of them white and
twenty-nine of them foreign-born.
The establishment of ranches and railroad construction
led to a need for local government. A petition for
organization was circulated through the county in 1888,
and in November of that year an election was held.
Panhandle, the county's only town at that time, was
designated the county seat. Despite organization,
however, the county remained a ranching area throughout
the 1890s, with a small population and only a handful of
farmers and stock raisers appearing as the decade wore
on. As late as 1900 only 469 people were living in Carson
County, and only fifty-six farms and ranches had been
established.
Water had to be brought to Panhandle by railroad from the
area of Miami in Roberts County, then carried in barrels
on wagons to homesteads. This problem hindered
development until it was found that abundant underground
water could be pumped to the surface by windmills. That
discovery, together with the selling of White Deer lands
to small ranchers and farmers in 1902, greatly increased
the area's attractiveness. During the next thirty years a
modern agricultural economy emerged, based on the
production of livestock, wheat, corn, and grain sorghum.
Continued railroad expansion during the first decades of
the twentieth century helped to encourage farmers to
settle in the area. The Choctaw, Oklahoma and Texas
Railroad built from the Texas-Oklahoma Territory border
to Yarnall, crossing the southern edge of Carson County
on an east-west line. The townsites of Groom, Lark, and
Conway appeared at this time along the railroad
right-of-way. In 1904 the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf
bought this line. In the early 1900s the Santa Fe
Railroad decided to improve its Kansas-Texas-New Mexico
line and make it a major transcontinental route. The
Santa Fe already had access to the Southern Kansas of
Texas line from the Oklahoma Territory border to
Panhandle City. In 1908 the Southern Kansas of Texas
extended its line from Panhandle City to Amarillo, thus
completing the Texas section of the Santa Fe's
transcontinental route.
During the early twentieth century both Europeans and
Americans built the agricultural economy of the county
and added variety to the cultural milieu of the
Panhandle. Anglo-American farmers arrived early in the
century, settling as early as 1901 and 1902 around the
new town of Groom in the southeastern corner of the
county. A large number of German Catholics arrived in
western Carson County and eastern Potter County between
1909 and the 1920s. They established St. Francis, a
community that straddles the Potter-Carson county line.
This community retained its ethnic character into the
1990s. Likewise, a large Polish Catholic population
developed in the eastern part of the county on lands
purchased from White Deer lands by immigrants. They began
to arrive in 1909 and centered their community around a
new village named White Deer, laid out in the same year.
This community has also retained the cultural heritage of
the settlers.
Between 1900 and 1930 farming activity in the county
markedly increased. By 1920, 284 farms had been
established in the county; by 1920, 426; and by 1930,
542. Meanwhile, the United States Census Bureau reported
that the number of "improved" acres in the
county had jumped from only 4,663 in 1900 to over 241,620
in 1930. Local farmers concentrated on growing corn,
oats, sorghum, and particularly wheat; by 1930 wheat
culture occupied more than 182,740 acres. By 1930 242,000
acres, or 42 percent of the entire county, was used for
farming. Meanwhile, cattle ranching remained an important
component of the economy. Carson County ranchers owned
18,435 cattle in 1900, 22,587 in 1910, 28,370 in 1920,
and 16,621 in 1930.
During the 1920s and 1930s the oil and gas industry
became another major component of Carson County's
economy. Experimental drilling by Gulf Oil Corporation
led to the county's, and the Panhandle's, first oil and
gas production in late 1921. Little activity occurred,
however, until the discovery of the huge Borger field,
thirty miles north, in 1925, when a wave of oil
exploration and production swept the Panhandle, including
Carson County. By the end of 1926 the county had produced
over a million barrels of oil and had also emerged as a
large natural gas producer. Oilfield activity led to
renewed railroad construction in the county and to the
construction of another town. In 1926 the Panhandle and
Santa Fe built a thirty-two-mile spur from Panhandle to
Borger to tap the oil profits. In 1927 the same railroad
built a ten-mile spur from White Deer to Skellytown, a
new town built that year by Skelly Oil to serve a
recently constructed refinery. Thus, by the 1930s Carson
County had a diversified economy based on ranching,
farming, petroleum, and transportation.
As the county's economy developed between 1900 and 1930,
its population rose. In 1910 the census counted 2,027
residents in Carson County, and by 1930 the population
had increased to 7,745. During the Great Depression of
the 1930s, however, agricultural production dropped off,
and many local farmers were forced to leave their lands.
Cropland harvested in the county dropped from 220,734
acres in 1929 to 180,971 in 1940; the number of farms
dropped during the same period from 542 to 493. The
population of the county as a whole declined by 15
percent during the years of the depression, falling to
6,624 by 1940.
During and since World War II defense spending by the
federal government has helped the local economy. In
September 1942 the Pantex Ordnance Plant (see PANTEX,
TEXAS) began to manufacture bombs and artillery shells.
The plant was on 16,076 acres of southwestern Carson
County land, where it operated until August 1945. In 1949
Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University)
acquired the site for use as an agricultural experiment
station. During the Korean War, however, the federal
government took back more than 10,000 acres of the site
for use as a nuclear weapons assembly plant. By the 1980s
Pantex had become the only nuclear assembly plant in the
country; it employed more than 2,500 people and had been
the scene of numerous antinuclear protests.
By the 1920s State Highway 33 (now U.S. Highway 60) ran
from Oklahoma through Canadian, Pampa, and Panhandle,
then proceeded to Amarillo, where it joined U.S. Highway
66. During the 1930s paved state roads were built from
Panhandle north to Borger and south to Conway, on U.S.
66. Farm and ranch roads also appeared during those
years. In the 1960s Interstate Highway 40, from Oklahoma
City to Amarillo, was built across the southern portion
of the county along the route of old U.S. 66, which was
originally built in the 1920s.
Though petroleum production in the area has declined,
Carson County has remained a substantial, if not
spectacular, producer of oil and gas. In 1946 county
wells pumped 4,955,000 barrels of petroleum; in 1978,
1,360,000; and in 1990, 747,000. By the end of 1990 more
than 172,852,460 barrels of petroleum had been produced
from county lands.
Carson County therefore has a balanced and diversified
economy based on ranching, farming, oil, transportation,
and the Pantex plant. Most of the farmland is located in
the eastern part of the county, while the western part
remains ranchland. In the 1940s and 1950s many local
farmers drilled irrigation wells to tap the Ogallala
Aquifer, and by the 1980s about 33 percent of cultivated
land in the county was irrigated. The local agricultural
economy remained relatively static after the 1940s; by
1982, land under cultivation totaled 281,424 acres. The
number of farms and farmers declined, however, as
mechanization led to a growth in farm size and
corresponding decline in the number of farms.
The population of the county also remained essentially
stable after World War II. It rose from 6,624 in 1940 to
6,852 in 1950, and again to 7,781 by 1960. It declined
somewhat during the 1960s to 6,358 in 1970, then rose
again to 6,672 in 1980. In 1990 the population of the
county was to be 6,576. The bulk of the county's
population now lives in its towns, which include White
Deer, Skellytown, Groom, and Rocky Mount. Panhandle (1990
population 2,353) is Carson County's largest town and its
seat of government.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Rual Dewey Ford, A Survey History of Carson
County, Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Colorado,
1933). Donald E. Green, Fifty Years of Service to West
Texas Agriculture: A History of Texas Tech University's
College of Agricultural Sciences, 1925-1975 (Lubbock:
Texas Tech University Press, 1977). Highways of Texas,
1927 (Houston: Gulf Oil and Refining, 1927). Jo Stewart
Randel, ed., A Time to Purpose: A Chronicle of Carson
County (4 vols., Hereford, Texas: Pioneer, 1966-72).
Texas Crop and Livestock Reporting Service, Texas County
Statistics (Austin: Texas Department of Agriculture,
1980).
Donald R. Abbe
CARSON COUNTY
SQUARE HOUSE MUSEUM
The Square House Museum in Panhandle,
Texas, opened in 1967. The museum complex started with
one twenty-four-foot square house, one of the oldest
houses in Carson County, and grew by 1986 to eight
structures. The buildings and exhibits include the Opal
R. Weatherly Purvines Annex with costume and changing art
exhibits, the pioneer dugout dwelling, the Santa Fe
Railroad Caboose, a bank exhibit and blacksmith shop,
Freedom Hall with history exhibits, Moody Hall with
wildlife exhibits, and the Finch, Lord, and Nelson farm
and ranch exhibits. An Eclipse windmill stands on the
grounds. Private and corporate funding has provided for
building museum structures and for operation and
maintenance of the facility; county support pays for
utilities and staff salaries. The museum also holds one
major fund-raiser annually, at Museum Day in the fall.
More than 10,000 artifacts are housed at the museum,
including documents, photographs, historical items, guns,
natural history specimens, and archeological artifacts.
Bronze sculptures and a large collection of Indian art
add to the fine arts collection. Educational tours and
outreach programs for local and area schools are an
integral part of the educational program. A Summer Youth
Arts program involves students from all county towns.
Adult organizations tour the museum and attend
museum-sponsored lecture series. The museum has an active
publication program, which has produced a history of
Carson County, a cookbook, a children's book, and
historical videos. The museum newsletter is sent
quarterly to supporters. The Square House Museum is
accredited by the American Association of Museums and has
been awarded the American Association for State and Local
History National Award of Merit.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Carson County Square House Museum
Newsletter, Summer 1986.
Mogie R. McCray
