Hotel Turkey
Turkey, Hall County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built in 1927 to provide lodging for railroad travelers, salesmen, and ranchers who came to town on business, the Hotel Turkey also served as a symbol of the growth business leaders hoped would characterize the young railroad settlement. The hotel opened with 20 guest rooms and extra rooms for community functions. The 2-story structure features decorative brickwork and a porch with brick archways. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark-1985
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the Hotel Turkey opened in 1927 with twenty guest rooms, it welcomed the railroad travelers, traveling salesmen, and ranchers who did business in this young Panhandle town. Its decorative brickwork and arched porch were meant to project the ambition of a settlement that hoped the railroad would make it grow. The hotel stood as a symbol of the optimism that surrounded early West Texas rail towns.
Why it matters
Small-town railroad hotels were the commercial heart of frontier settlements, and their fortunes rose and fell with the rail lines that determined which prairie towns would thrive.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
1928 Phillips 66 Service Station
Turkey, TX
The small Panhandle town of Turkey boomed in the mid-1920s, sitting where two early auto highways — the Ozark Trail and the coast-to-coast Bankhead Highway — met the new railroad. As automobiles multiplied, the Phillips Petroleum Company poured investment into the town, culminating on July 27, 1928, in this Phillips 66 station, the company's first in Texas. Built in Tudor Revival style with brick, a steep roof, and "Phillips 66" glass globes, it was designed to blend into the residential street while fueling a community on the move.
Gasoline Cotton Gin
Quitaque, TX
Cotton farmers began settling this High Plains area in 1903, and a new water well in 1906 drew still more. With the nearest gin ten miles away in Turkey, three partners bought a gasoline-powered engine and built their own gin here, ginning the first bale in April 1907. The gin gave rise to a town literally named Gasoline, which withered after the railroad bypassed it in 1927; the gin itself burned in 1938.
The Ozark Trail at Tampico
Turkey, TX
In 1913 William Hope "Coin" Harvey, an Ozark resort operator, founded the Ozark Trail Association to promote a private auto highway running diagonally from St. Louis to Santa Fe, its routes marked by white obelisks lettered in green with town names, directions, and distances. A southern branch threaded through the Texas Panhandle communities of Childress, Estelline, Tampico, Turkey, and beyond, with Tulia's J.E. Swepston championing the markers after his 1920 election as association president. Federal road-numbering absorbed the private trails by 1924, and the nearby Tampico oilfield's 1929 boom soon faded, but this obelisk — a State Archeological Landmark since 1999 — still stands as a relic of early motoring.
William E. Schott
Silverton, TX
William E. Schott, born in Ohio in 1870, came to the Texas Panhandle in 1890 while still a minor and filed the first of what would become extensive landholdings. In 1891 he conquered the steep Caprock escarpment by building the first wagon road up to Silverton, and the next year he helped organize Briscoe County. A major force in settling the region, he backed local schools, worked to improve area cattle herds, and left his name on the Schott Cap Road.