Dallam County
Dalhart, Dallam County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Formed from Young and Bexar territories: Created August 21, 1876; Organized July 28, 1891. Named in honor of James W. Dallam, 1818-1847. Compiler of digest of decisions of Supreme Court of the Republic of Texas, 1845. County Seat, Texline, 1891-1903. Dalhart, since this area was once part of XIT Ranch. (1936)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Dallam County was carved from older territories in 1876 and organized in 1891, taking its name from James W. Dallam, who in 1845 compiled a digest of the Republic of Texas Supreme Court's decisions. The county seat shifted from Texline to Dalhart, on land that had once belonged to the vast XIT Ranch — the three-million-acre spread the state traded for its capitol building.
Why it matters
The Texas Panhandle's counties were shaped by the great ranching era, and Dallam's link to the legendary XIT Ranch marks the moment open range gave way to organized towns and county government on the high plains.
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Related people
- · James W. Dallam
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Heartland of Old XIT Ranch
Dalhart, TX
The XIT was one of the largest ranches on earth, born of an 1882 deal in which out-of-state investors led by Chicago's Farwell brothers built the massive Texas capitol in Austin and took three million acres of Panhandle land in payment. Fenced by some 6,000 miles of barbed wire and stretching 200 miles across ten counties, it saw its first herd delivered in 1885, when trail boss Abner Blocker scratched the famous "XIT" brand in the corral dust. Dalhart still honors the ranch's cowboys with the "empty saddle" monument, dedicated in 1940.
Mrs. Cordia Sloan Duke
Dalhart, TX
Cordia Sloan Duke married into ranch life in 1907 when her husband became a division manager of the XIT Ranch, then the largest in the world at three million acres, and she "looked after" its 150 cowboys along with her own family. Sensing that a way of life was vanishing, she kept a diary of everyday ranch events and persuaded 81 others to do the same. Their collected record preserved an authentic, ground-level account of the working cowboy that might otherwise have been lost.
Dallam County Courthouse
Dalhart, TX
Dallam County, created in 1876 and named for Republic of Texas attorney James W. Dallam, first seated its government at the railroad town of Texline. When the Rock Island line crossed the Fort Worth and Denver City tracks in 1901, the new town of Dalhart sprang up at the junction and captured the county seat by 1903. This Classical Revival courthouse, designed by Amarillo's Smith & Townes and completed in 1923, still crowns the townsite with its Ionic columns and curved parapets.
St. James Church
Dalhart, TX
In the young railroad town of Dalhart, high on the Texas Panhandle, an Episcopal congregation took shape by 1902, worshipping wherever it could — in other churches, a bank, even the Felton Opera House — before raising its own building in 1910. The new church was consecrated in January 1911 as the very first official act of E. A. Temple, bishop of the North Texas Missionary District, a reminder of how new organized religion still was to this frontier country.