Hobbs Independent School District
Rotan vicinity, Fisher County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The first school in what would become the Hobbs community was known as Buffalo and taught in a tent on Buffalo Creek from 1887 to 1888. The Rev. Robert Martin erected a church and schoolhouse on the site with funds from his home church in Louisiana. By 1896 the school was named for Vachel Hobbs Anderson, postmaster at Roby, and had changed locations several times. J. W. Hale became county school superintendent in 1922. His efforts contributed to the voters' decision to consolidate the Hobbs, Dallas, Grady and Baird common school districts in 1924. The new district, known as Hobbs Consolidated Common School District No. 18, united the four districts. The new eleven-grade Hobbs school facility opened in 1925. With additions and annexations in ensuing years, Hobbs grew from 85 square miles to 240, combining many schools: Guinn, Sardis, Lone Star, Buffalo, Claytonville, Camp Springs, County Line, Capitola, Sam Bone, Busby, Barronview, Plainview, Cottonwood, Bush, Lone Valley, Midway, Gannoway, Rico, Busby, Rough Creek, Chicken Foot, Linn, Pyron and others. In the 1930s the Works Progress Administration added the primary, home economics and vocational agricultural buildings to the campus, and grade twelve was added to the course of studies. After World War II the rural population decreased as people migrated to cities. High school enrollment was 380 in the 1940s. A new building was constructed in 1956, a cafeteria in 1969 and a new vocational agricultural building in 1976. The high school was closed in 1980 and, when elementary school enrollment dropped to 13 in the fall of 1989, Hobbs Independent School District was dissolved and annexed to the Roby, Rotan and Snyder districts. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Education in the Hobbs community began in a tent on Buffalo Creek in 1887 and grew through a church-schoolhouse built with funds from a Louisiana congregation. Over the decades the district consolidated dozens of tiny rural schools — Guinn, Sardis, Lone Star, Chicken Foot, and many more — into a single system, with WPA-built classrooms added in the 1930s. As the farm population drained toward the cities after World War II, enrollment collapsed, and the district was dissolved and annexed to neighbors in 1989.
Why it matters
Hobbs traces the whole arc of rural American schooling — from a one-room tent to consolidation and finally dissolution as the countryside emptied out.
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Related people
- · Vachel Hobbs Anderson
- · J. W. Hale
Themes & tags
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