Former Office Site of Texas Land & Development Company
Plainview, Hale County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Unique agricultural pioneer. Founded in 1912 by J.W. Grant and M.D. Henderson, who obtained Eastern and European capital to develop 65,000 acres of Hale, Floyd and Swisher county lands. This area became one of the most productive in America, because of the irrigated and drylands farming methods used by T.L. & D., which operated until 1956. Winfield Holbrook was the vice president and general manager; W.J. Klinger, secretary-treasurer; D.D. Bowman and W.F. Lowe, farm superintendents. Mary L. Cox, of the staff, wrote local history. (1973)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1912, the Texas Land & Development Company was an agricultural experiment on an enormous scale, drawing Eastern and European capital to develop 65,000 acres across Hale, Floyd, and Swisher counties. By pioneering irrigated and dryland farming methods on the High Plains, the company helped make the region one of the most productive in America before winding down in 1956. Its officers, farm superintendents, and even a staff historian left their mark on Panhandle agriculture.
Why it matters
The company's irrigation-driven model showed that the semi-arid Texas plains could be turned into rich farmland, reshaping the agricultural map of the American West.
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Related people
- · J.W. Grant
- · M.D. Henderson
- · Winfield Holbrook
- · Mary L. Cox
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Colonel C. C. Slaughter
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Hailed as the first native-born "cattle king" of Texas, C. C. Slaughter worked cattle from boyhood and pushed his herds onto the West Texas frontier by 1856, supplying beef to the Confederacy and riding in a frontier regiment during the Civil War. Afterward he helped rescue the bankrupt state's economy by opening cattle markets, improved the Texas Longhorn with Shorthorn and Hereford bulls, and helped organize the first cattle raisers association. At his height he ranched around a million acres and became a banker and philanthropist.
The Santa Fe Railroad in Plainview
Plainview, TX
Operating in the Panhandle since 1886, the Santa Fe Railroad planned around 1900 to push into the rich farmland of the South Plains. Plainview's leaders raised $75,000 to court a connection, and on December 31, 1906, the first train arrived to end the town's isolation. Land agents soon brought trainloads of prospective settlers, and a courthouse, schools, an opera house, and Wayland's new institute rose in the boom that followed.
Site of Lake Plainview
Plainview, TX
On the arid High Plains, water was everything, and Plainview's civic leaders staked the town's future on finding it underground. In 1911 they bored the region's first deep wells, and the next year the Texas Land & Development Co. sank a demonstration well that filled Lake Plainview—billed as the largest body of water in Texas fed by a well. Popular but costly, the lake reverted to nature after a 1917 fire destroyed its pump house.
Rawleigh Porteus Smyth
Plainview, TX
Austin-born and educated at the Texas Military Institute, Rawleigh Porteus Smyth rose to brigadier general after service in the Spanish-American War. But his deepest mark on Texas was made with a surveyor's chain: in 1887 he ran the boundaries of the great South Plains ranches and platted the towns of Plainview, Happy, Tulia, and Kress. As a state legislator in 1897 he wrote laws to aid Plains settlers, and as a tireless irrigation advocate he helped turn the dry High Plains into farmland.