Hermleigh
Hermleigh, Scurry County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Townsite surveyed 1907 by H. W. Harlin and R. C. Herm, on Roscoe, Snyder & Pacific Railroad. Post office, store and church moved here from Wheat, community to the northeast. In 1907 new town--a trade center for livestock farmers--had 2 banks, a lumber yard, a newspaper; 2-story brick school was built 1909. Santa Fe Railroad came through in 1911. In 1918, a war hero was honored by town's name change to "Foch". Old name was reinstated 1921. Six miles east is Sand Stone Canyon, with Indian pictographs. Skeletons of extinct mammals have been excavated nearby. (1966)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Surveyed in 1907 along a new rail line, Hermleigh sprang up almost overnight as a trade center for West Texas livestock farmers, boasting two banks, a lumber yard, and a newspaper within its first year. When the Santa Fe arrived in 1911 the town's future seemed set; during World War I patriotic fervor briefly renamed it "Foch" for the French marshal before the original name returned in 1921.
Why it matters
Hermleigh is a classic railroad-born prairie town, its very name a small record of how a distant world war reached into rural America.
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Related people
- · H. W. Harlin
- · R. C. Herm
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Former Townsite of Wheat
Hermleigh, TX
A small farming settlement grew here in the late 1880s and took the name Wheat after a bumper wheat crop the year its post office opened in 1890. Served by postmasters Minerva Thomas and G. W. McCall, it had a school that doubled as a church. When the Roscoe, Snyder & Pacific Railroad bypassed the community in 1907, residents relocated two stores and a cotton gin to the new railside townsite of Hermleigh, and Wheat faded away.
Pyron, Texas
Hermleigh, TX
Pyron sprang up on the West Texas plains around a rancher named Bob Pyron, whose cellar hosted the community's first school before the town was formally founded in 1900. A decade later its citizens picked up and moved four miles to reach the Santa Fe Railroad, where Pyron flourished with a two-story hotel, an Odd Fellows hall, stores, and a cotton gin. When a highway bypassed the site the town faded, its post office closing in 1952, until only a railroad crossing sign and a handful of houses remained.
Dunn
Dunn, TX
Dunn began about 1881 as a change station where freighters resting their teams hauled goods north after the Texas & Pacific Railway reached Colorado City. A blacksmith shop and store sprang up to serve the wagon traffic, mail was dropped at the Dunn family home, and a post office named for them opened in 1890 with the first school built the same year. A community well, windmill, and trough once stood in the middle of the road—covered over only when the highway was paved in 1938.
Site of O.K. Wagon Yard
Snyder, TX
In the early 1900s the O.K. Wagon Yard on Snyder's old Jackass Avenue offered travelers rooms and horse stalls for two bits apiece, along with blacksmithing, harness repair, and stud animals — and, with the right introduction, a jar of homemade "White Lightning." Saturdays brought passed-hat rodeos, and "first Mondays" drew farmers, ranchers, and mule skinners to swap livestock and goods. The yard closed in the 1930s.