Big Four School
Crosbyton, Crosby County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The community of big four lies a few miles north of Crosbyton. The W.H. Hames and M.A. Reynolds families moved here in 1902 and 1909, respectively, and four houses were built on land owned by the Morrison brothers around one windmill which supplied water for all four houses. With the coming of settlers, the parker and fowler families soon called for a school house. In 1909 Hames and S.K. Freeman built a one-room school house. In 1916 a new two-room school house was built for the growing big four community. In 1936 an auditorium was built on the school grounds to be used as a community center. Big Four School was one of five rural schools that remained in Crosby County in 1953. Critical problems confronted the rural school, including lack of financial resources, poor facilities, difficulty in maintaining students, and inability to secure qualified teachers. Rural schools existed for a specific purpose, and when the big four school could no longer compete with larger schools, it closed. The two-room school building was moved in the mid-1950s to be used as a school for the Crosbyton Independent School District’s African American students. The school building later burned to the ground. The school district gave the Big Four School auditorium building to local residents with deed stipulation for use as the big four community center. The wooden building was last utilized around 1980, when it was used for Big Four club meetings. The building was turned back to the school district in 1981. With the poor condition of the auditorium building and lack of funds to restore it, the property and building was sold in 2011, resulting in the demolition of the auditorium and the erection of a new home.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The tiny community of Big Four, named for four houses clustered around a single windmill north of Crosbyton, took shape as settler families arrived in the early 1900s. A one-room schoolhouse went up in 1909, replaced by a two-room building in 1916 and joined by a community auditorium in 1936. As one of the last rural schools in Crosby County, it struggled with scarce funds and teachers before closing, after which its building was moved to serve the district's African American students.
Why it matters
Big Four's rise and fall traces the hard life of the small rural school on the West Texas plains, including the segregated schooling that shaped Black education in the mid-20th-century South.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The community of Big Four took shape on the high, dry plains of West Texas a few miles north of Crosbyton, in the early years of the twentieth century — a time when settlers were still filing onto the flat Llano Estacado country and coaxing farms out of grassland. It was the Progressive and Modern era, but out here life ran on older, harder rhythms: wind, water, and distance.
Water was the whole story. The Hames family arrived in 1902 and the Reynolds family in 1909, and four houses rose on land owned by the Morrison brothers, all clustered around a single windmill that supplied every one of them. That windmill — and the four homes it served — gave the little settlement its name.
As more families came, the country slowly filled in. And as anywhere Americans put down roots, one of the first things the settlers wanted, after water and shelter, was a school for their children.
People & events
The call for a schoolhouse came from settling families — the Parker and Fowler households among those who pressed for one. In 1909, Hames and S. K. Freeman answered by raising a one-room school, the humblest and most essential building a frontier community could put up.
Big Four grew, and its school grew with it. In 1916 a two-room building replaced the original, and in 1936 an auditorium went up on the grounds to double as a community center — the beating social heart of a scattered rural neighborhood. By 1953 Big Four was one of only five rural schools still operating in Crosby County, a survivor in an age when small country schools were rapidly disappearing.
But survival was hard. The rural school faced scarce money, aging facilities, trouble keeping enough students, and difficulty attracting qualified teachers. When Big Four could no longer compete with larger, better-funded schools, it closed. Its two-room building was then moved, in the mid-1950s, to serve as a school for the Crosbyton Independent School District's African American students — before eventually burning to the ground. The auditorium lived on for a time as a community center, hosting Big Four club meetings into about 1980, until it was returned to the district in 1981 and, finally, sold and demolished in 2011 to make way for a new home.
Its place in the American story
Big Four's rise and fall is the story of the American one-room school, told in a single place. All across the rural landscape, small communities once built their own schools by hand and defended them fiercely, only to watch them close in the mid-twentieth century as consolidation, money, and mobility favored larger institutions. The reasons Big Four gave for closing — no funds, no facilities, no teachers — echo in thousands of shuttered country schools nationwide.
The fate of the two-room building carries a heavier weight. That it was relocated specifically to school the district's African American children is a plain artifact of the era's segregation, when Black and white students were educated apart and Black schools were routinely handed the older, cast-off buildings. In that one act of moving a used schoolhouse, the marker preserves an unvarnished truth about how public education was divided in the mid-century South and Southwest.
Together these threads make Big Four more than a local memory. It stands for the vanished world of the small rural school, and for the separate and unequal schooling that shaped Black education in its time — two large national stories rooted in one modest windmill settlement.
If you visit
Come to Big Four expecting to use your imagination, because the buildings themselves are gone — the schoolhouse burned, and the auditorium was demolished in 2011. What remains is the land, the sky, and the wind that first drew and then tested the people who settled here.
Stand in the open country north of Crosbyton and picture the four houses gathered around their single windmill, and children walking in to a one-room school. On these flat, exposed plains it's easy to feel the isolation the marker describes — the very distances that made keeping a rural school alive so difficult.
This is a stop for travelers drawn to the human history of the West Texas plains rather than to a preserved site. Read the marker slowly, let it hold the full arc — the hopeful founding, the long struggle, the segregated afterlife of the building, the final demolition — and Big Four will stay with you long after you've driven on.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mary & Mac Private School
Lubbock, TX
In 1954, educator Lucille Graves founded Mary & Mac Private School in Lubbock as a preschool for African American children, at a time when private schools for Black students were exceedingly rare. Named for a version of the hand-clapping rhyme 'Mary Mack,' the school began in a Baptist church auditorium, grew into its own building by 1961, and eventually offered classes through high school for as many as 120 students. Graves — the first African American accepted at Texas Tech — ran the school with her family until it closed in 1993, shortly after her death.
Site of Leatherwood School
Crosbyton, TX
This corner of Crosby County was settled in 1898 by the family and relatives of M. G. Leatherwood, and as more families arrived they created the Leatherwood Common School District in 1912. The first classes met in a one-room schoolhouse in 1913, and at its peak the school grew to three teachers and thirty-six students. It consolidated with a neighboring district in 1935 and held its final classes in 1949, closing as farm families moved to the cities.
Near Site of Pansy Baptist Church
Crosbyton, TX
Founded in 1905 to serve the farming families of the Pansy community, this Baptist congregation met in a schoolhouse before building its own sanctuaries, weathering fire, relocation, and the slow emptying of rural West Texas. When the last members disbanded in 1995, they gave their building to an African American congregation, and 140 volunteers moved the structure 32 miles to its new home in Floydada.
Farmer Community
Cone vicinity, TX
Settlement of the Farmer community began in 1887 on the West Texas plains, and by 1893 residents had organized a school district, funding an early building with gifts from as far away as Amarillo and Colorado City. Churches of many faiths took root here, and the community produced Ima Smith, who grew up in Farmer and became First Lady of Texas as the wife of Governor Preston Smith.