Former Whiteface Hotel
Whiteface, Cochran County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built 1926 by realtor Wm. E. Flenniken, this was first brick structure in town. It housed land shoppers when Cochran County was opened to sales of small tracts. Given 1968 to Girlstown, U.S.A., by J. S. Noel estate, for use of the management. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1969
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Realtor William E. Flenniken put up this hotel in 1926 as the first brick building in Whiteface, raised to house prospective buyers when Cochran County opened for sale in small tracts. It stood at the center of the land rush that peopled this corner of the South Plains. In 1968 the J.S. Noel estate gave the building to Girlstown, U.S.A., for the use of its management.
Why it matters
The hotel captures the 1920s land-sales boom that settled the last open stretches of West Texas, where a brick building signaled a town's ambitions to endure.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the mid-1920s, the far western edge of the Texas South Plains was one of the last big stretches of the state still waiting for farmers. For decades this flat, high country had been cattle range: huge open spreads where you could ride all day without seeing a fence or a plowed field. Cochran County, along the New Mexico line, was among the last Texas counties to be settled, and it was organized only in the 1920s.
That changed when the big landholdings began selling off in small tracts. Across the South Plains, the 1920s brought a land rush made possible by new railroads, better farm machinery and the hope that cotton and grain could thrive where only grass had grown. Real estate men ran excursions and advertised widely, and families from older farming regions came out to look over the land with an eye to starting over.
Nationally, the decade was a time of easy credit and big optimism, and Texas farmland was part of the boom. Almost nobody guessed that within a few years the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl would hit these same plains hard. In 1926, though, a new town like Whiteface was a bet on the future, and every new building was a sign that people meant to stay.
People & events
The man behind this building was William E. Flenniken, a realtor whose business was selling Cochran County land. Selling land in a place with almost no buildings had a practical problem: the buyers needed somewhere to stay. Prospective settlers who came out to inspect tracts needed a bed, a meal and a roof while they made up their minds, so in 1926 Flenniken built a hotel.
He built it of brick, and that mattered. It was the first brick building in Whiteface, at a time when most new prairie towns were thrown up in lumber. Brick was more expensive and more permanent. To a family weighing whether to sink its savings into this land, a solid brick hotel said the town was not a speculator's mirage that would blow away in a year.
The building's story did not end with the land rush. In 1968 the estate of J. S. Noel gave it to Girlstown, U.S.A., a home for girls based in Whiteface, for the use of its management. The building raised to welcome strangers looking for a new start went on to serve an institution devoted to giving young people one. A year later, in 1969, the state recognized the old hotel as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.
Its place in the American story
The settlement of the American West did not end with the closing of the frontier in the 1890s. In places like Cochran County it went on well into the twentieth century, as the last large ranch lands were divided and sold to families who wanted farms of their own. The Whiteface hotel is a physical reminder of that late chapter, when the homesteading dream was carried forward by real estate companies, railroads and promotional campaigns.
The building also shows how much early Western towns depended on businessmen who were part developer and part booster. The hotel was a tool for selling land, and in this case the land-selling business more or less created the town. A great many small Western communities began the same way, around the commercial interests that brought the first settlers in.
The building's second life fits a broader American pattern too. When a structure outlives its first purpose, communities often find a new one for it, and a building's later use can matter as much as its first. Here, a land-rush hotel became part of a charitable institution, and that reuse helped keep it standing long enough to be honored as a landmark.
If you visit
Whiteface is a small town in a big landscape, and that is part of the experience. The country around it is famously flat and open, with long horizons and a huge sky. Standing near the old hotel, try to picture it new and alone on the plains: a brick building where a would-be farmer stepped off a long ride and slept before going out to walk the land.
Look at the brickwork and the building's solid, practical lines. In a place where almost everything else was wood, brick was a statement. Ask yourself what it would have meant to a hesitant land buyer to see something this durable already standing.
The building is tied to the Girlstown organization, so treat the site respectfully and view it from public areas. Whiteface makes a good stop on a South Plains road trip that takes in the farm towns west of Lubbock. It is a chance to see the late-settled West, where the frontier story runs into the 1920s, before roads and modern agriculture filled in the map.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · William E. Flenniken
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Slaughter Ranch Headquarters
Morton, TX
This was the working heart of the pioneering C.C. Slaughter Ranch, a 246,669-acre spread across Cochran and Hockley counties assembled by Col. C.C. Slaughter—a Texas leader in ranching, banking, and religion—between 1898 and 1901. The first headquarters was a humble half-dugout, but in 1915 the Slaughter cattle company brought workers from Mexico to build this adobe-and-concrete quadrangle in the form of a Spanish hacienda. It stood among the finest Texas ranch buildings of its day.
Cochran County
Morton, TX
Cochran County was created in 1876 and named for Robert Cochran, a New Jersey native who died defending the Alamo in 1836. Settlement came slowly on this remote plain — the 1900 census counted just 25 cowboys — until the county finally organized in 1924 with Morton as its seat. Oil discovery and irrigated farming then drove rapid growth, and its Silver Lake had been known to early Spanish explorers as Laguna Quemado.
Fifth Street Missionary Baptist Church
Levelland, TX
In 1921, thirteen residents led by a Rev. Curry organized the first church in the newly founded town of Hockley City—today's Levelland—originally called First Missionary Baptist Church. Many of the town's early pioneers and leaders were members, and they completed a building here in 1926. Its first ordained minister, B.E. Gunn, doubled as the town's first postmaster, and the congregation long sustained missions, a food pantry, and community charity.
City of Levelland
Levelland, TX
Surveyed and platted in 1912 as "Hockley City" by cereal magnate C. W. Post, this barren High Plains townsite won the race for county seat in 1921 — the first meeting of county officers reportedly held inside a Cadillac. Early Levelland made do with a 16-by-32-foot temporary courthouse, a well, and a community black-eyed pea patch, before the railroad arrived in 1925 and oil was discovered nearby in 1937.