City of Ralls
Ralls, Crosby County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded by John R. Ralls, who donated land for a townsite. He erected greater part of the business district and gave free sites plus much of the cost of building each church in town. In 1911, he contributed 12 acres for school site. He also offered donation of 2,000 acres for site of Texas Technological College. Ralls, born in Culloden, Georgia, November 13, 1863; moved West in 1880's. After settling litigation with C.B. Livestock Company, sponsors of towns of Crosbyton and Cedric, Ralls secured railroad station, 1916; city was incorporated January 6, 1922, after death of founder. 1967
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Ralls owes its existence to John R. Ralls, a Georgia-born settler who moved West in the 1880s and gave land for a townsite, free lots for its churches, acreage for its school, and even offered 2,000 acres to lure Texas Technological College. After settling litigation with a rival townsite company, he secured a railroad station in 1916, the guarantee of the town's survival. The city was incorporated in 1922, just after its founder's death.
Why it matters
Ralls is a textbook case of the railroad-era West Texas town, where one determined booster's generosity and a rail connection could conjure a community out of the plains.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John R. Ralls
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
John R. Ralls Building
Ralls, TX
When the railroad bypassed nearby Emma and cut instead across John R. Ralls's land, he founded a new town in its place and donated ground for homesites, the square, the school, and every church. This bank building was the grandest of the two-plus blocks of business houses he raised between 1915 and 1919 as the town took shape.
John Robinson Ralls
Ralls, TX
When the Crosbyton-South Plains Railroad pushed across the high plains of West Texas, John Robinson Ralls saw a town where others saw only ranchland. A Georgia-born storekeeper turned rancher, he traded a thriving general store for a 10,000-acre spread and in 1911 founded the town that still bears his name. He gave away the townsite itself, land for the first school, lots for every church, and built much of the early business district, seeding a community from the ground up.
Emma
Ralls vicinity, TX
In the spring of 1891, merchants R. L. Stringfellow and H. E. Hume laid out the town of Emma, named for Stringfellow's future wife, opening it with a picnic and a sale of town lots. That fall it won the Crosby County seat, and residents dismantled the courthouse at Estacado and hauled it piece by piece to Emma's square. The town boomed for two decades until the South Plains Railroad bypassed it by five miles in 1910; the county seat moved to Crosbyton, buildings were carted off, and Emma faded into a ghost town whose only surviving link is its cemetery.
Village of Cone
Cone, TX
The village of Cone was named in 1903 for S. E. Cone, who helped carry mail from the nearby town of Emma across the West Texas plains. A post office opened that year in R. E. Chapman's general store, and the little town gathered a school, stores, and churches around it. Today it sits at the center of irrigated farmland producing cotton, sorghum, and wheat.