Crosby County Courthouses
Crosbyton, Crosby County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Crosby County, created in 1876 and organized 1886, had its first county seat at Estacado (founded 1879 by a colony of Quakers). It was on a mail and stage road, in the northeast corner of the county. Freight hauling of materials was slow. County offices were in dugouts, shacks and wagons for two years, until the first courthouse could be completed in 1888. The second county seat was established in 1890 at Emma (named for the fiancee of R. L. Stringfellow, one of the town's promoters), nine miles west of here. The courthouse at Estacado was taken down, moved and rebuilt at cost of $3,000. It served 20 years. When the Crosbyton-South Plains Railroad was built in 1910, Emma was four miles off its route. Crosbyton won an election as the new county seat, and Julian Bassett (one of the founders of Crosbyton) donated a site for the courthouse. The county court met in the schoolhouse until the building of the present courthouse and jail in 1914. County judge at that time was Pink Parrish. Commissioners were John K. Fullingim, W. E. McLaughlin, J. A. Noble and R. M. Wheeler. This commemoration is by the 1965 Commissioners Court. County judge, Cecil Berry; Commissioners: Leilan Caddell, Curt Hendrick, Jack Henry, W. C. Odom. 1966
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Crosby County's seat wandered across the South Plains before settling down. It began in 1879 at Estacado, a Quaker colony where county offices worked out of dugouts, shacks, and wagons until the first courthouse rose in 1888. The seat jumped to Emma in 1890, then to Crosbyton after the Crosbyton-South Plains Railroad bypassed Emma in 1910 — and the present courthouse followed in 1914.
Why it matters
The county's musical-chairs county seats show how the railroad, not the founders' plans, ultimately decided which West Texas towns would survive.
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Related people
- · Julian Bassett
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Crosbyton
Crosbyton, TX
Crosbyton sprang up in 1908 on the ranch lands of the C.B. Livestock Company, which deliberately built a school, store, railroad, and inn to lure homesteaders onto the West Texas plains. The strategy worked: by 1911 the town claimed a thousand residents and the county seat. Once open range, the surrounding country became rich irrigated farmland.
Julian M. Bassett
Crosbyton, TX
In the early 1900s the flat, treeless expanse of the Texas South Plains was being carved into ranches and townsites as promoters raced to attract buyers and rail connections. Julian M. Bassett, a New York-born son of Texas migrants, helped run the C. B. Livestock Company and, to spur land sales, had the townsite of Crosbyton platted in 1907. His backing of the Crosbyton South Plains Rail Line helped the young town win the county seat in 1911, and he set aside this ground as a public cemetery.
City of Ralls
Ralls, TX
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.
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.