Follett
Follett, Lipscomb County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A gateway to Texas Panhandle's "Golden Spread". Founded as "Ivanhoe", on a site across state line, in Oklahoma. Town moved twice to locate on a railroad. Situated here in 1917, and renamed for Horace Follett, railroad surveyor. Economy based on wheat, cattle, grain sorghums and (since 1950's) oil and gas production. (1967)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Follett started life as "Ivanhoe" just across the line in Oklahoma, then chased the railroad, moving twice before settling on the Texas side in 1917. Renamed for a railroad surveyor, it became a gateway to the Panhandle's wheat-and-cattle "Golden Spread." Farming and ranching carried the town until oil and gas arrived in the 1950s.
Why it matters
Follett is a textbook Plains town whose very location was dictated by the rails, willing to pick up and move rather than be left off the line.
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Related people
- · Horace Follett
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fairmont Cemetery
Follett, TX
At the far northern tip of Texas—closer to six other state capitals than to Austin—Fairmont Cemetery outlasted the towns that made it. Settlers founded Ivanhoe in Oklahoma in 1901, moved it to the railroad as South Ivanhoe, then in 1917 dragged its buildings on skids across the state line to a new Santa Fe stop named Follett. The cemetery, deeded in 1910, holds its first burial the reinterred body of a mother of six killed by lightning, alongside the children of Mexican railroad workers lost to the 1918 influenza epidemic and more than a hundred military veterans.
Darrouzett Cemetery
Darrouzett, TX
Darrouzett began in 1917 as a station on the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway, first called Lourwood and then renamed by the railroad for a Galveston legislator. By its 1920 incorporation more than four hundred people lived there, supporting stores, a school, two churches, and a post office. When the community finally opened its own cemetery in 1939, families reinterred loved ones from older graveyards, and its ground now holds many veterans, including two men killed in Vietnam.
Lipscomb, Texas
Lipscomb, TX
Founded in 1886 by settlers betting on a proposed Santa Fe railroad across the Panhandle, Lipscomb boomed almost overnight—seven businesses opened in its first month, and it became the seat of the newly organized county in 1887. It was named for Abner S. Lipscomb, a jurist and secretary of state of the Republic of Texas. A hotel, courthouse, school, and stores soon filled the young town, whose fortunes always hinged on the rails.
Heart Cemetery
Booker, TX
Booker was platted in 1917 and named for a Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway engineer, its first residents relocating wholesale from La Kemp, Oklahoma, to the new rail town. As the community grew it needed a burial ground, and in 1929 the town dedicated land donated by the Mitchell family as Heart Cemetery, named for its heart-shaped design. Among its graves are the town's first physician, its early business leaders, and veterans reaching back to World War I.