History of Plainview

Plainview, Texas


The history of man's inhabitance of this area is known to trace back as far as 5,000 to 7,000 years B.C.  Those people were nomadic tribesman that tracked and hunted the great bison.  (The great bison was an ancestor of the modern buffalo, but about twice as large.)  These men depended on the animals for food, clothing, shelter, and spirituality,

Modern day bison, left.

When it was possible, nomads would herd the giant bison over cliffs and ditches and pounce on the ones that were killed or maimed in the fall.  Runningwater Draw is one of those places.  The  Plainview points are spearpoints that are distinctive to this area and were found with fossilized remains of these giant bison at one of these falls.  This find and the fossils later became the object of repeated archaeolocial studies.  

Modern day interpretation of a buffalo jump.

In the 16th century, new men began to arrive on the plains.  It was after the Spanish had traveled west and explored what was north of Mexico.  Coronado and Cortez passed through, searching for wealth and land to claim.

In the post Civil war years, a last generation of fronter men began searching for a new Frontier.  West Texas was this new frontier for many.  Cattlemen, buffalo hunters, and other settlers ventured west.  Between them and this new frontier stood the fierce Comanche Indians.  The Comanche resisted the influx of new men who came to use their hunting grounds to hunt their buffalo. 

To back themselves up, the men brought the U.S. Calvary.   The 9th and 10th U.S. Calvary regiments (made up of freed and enlisted slaves led by white officers) were dispatched to protect the people venturing into west Texas. (Buffalo soldiers)

In the early 1870s, General Randall Slidell MacKenzie lead the 4th U.S. Calvary through West Texas to end the reign of Quanah Parker, the last great Comanche war chief.  With the end of the Comanche reign, Hale county was created in 1876 and named for Lt. John C. Hale (a hero of the Battle of San Jacinto during the Texas revolution)

One year later, the first permanent white resident arrived to look at what he had expected to turn into a Methodist religious colony.  His name was Horatio Graves.  One year later he purchased 16 sections of land.  Five years later he created the first community of the county. Soon after, he and his community were gone.

Texas cattlemen searching for vast range land were the next to venture into this area.  T.W. and T.N. Morrison and W.D. Johnson put together the first ranching operation there.

Settlers/farmers were already arriving at this time.  In 1886, Z.T. Maxwell staked out a quarter section of land.  His friend Edwin L. Lowe, claimed an adjacent quarter section.  The next year, they both established the town site of Plainview - with its first post office.  

By 1888, there were enough people for Hale county to move from legal existence to an organized county with Plainview as the county seat.  From there, the transition to a young, modern city was almost instant.  The city had schools by 1889, doctors in 1890, and its first bank in 1900.  

People were accustomed to traveling there by wagon or horse, but the rail line changed Plainview.  The Santa Fe Railroad arrived in 1907.

Ranching and farming had their difficulties with the occasional harsh weather.  In 1920, irrigation was chosen as the way to success.  In 1911, from 130 feet below the surface, the Slaton Well began pumping 1700 gallons of clean, pure water a minute.  

This rail service and water establishment created a boom that was only slowed by the Great Depression, and then revitalized itself in another boom in the year after WWII. 

Plainview is now the heart of one of the country's most productive agricultural areas and, as a city, it has begun to make a transition from being strictly agriculture oriented, to a center of commerce.


























On another note, Plainview has a site and district on the National Register of Historic Places.  The Plainview Site.  (the location where the Plainview points and fossils were located)
And
The Plainview Commercial Historic District.