Irwin Ranch House
Andrews, Andrews County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Only building remaining in old Shafter Lake, first settlement in Andrews County and at one time its largest town. Built 1908. Concrete blocks, hand pressed from sand of Shafter Lake, are the original frame. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1967
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Irwin Ranch House is the last building left of Shafter Lake, once the largest town in Andrews County and its first real settlement. Built in 1908, its frame is made of concrete blocks hand-pressed from sand taken straight out of the dry lakebed. When the town faded, this lone structure remained to mark where a West Texas boomlet had briefly stood.
Why it matters
It is a tangible relic of the ghost towns that dotted the West Texas plains, where settlements rose and vanished with the fortunes of water, rail, and land.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1900s, the far western Texas plains were among the last open land in the state. The Llano Estacado (the Staked Plains) is a vast, nearly flat tableland with few trees, little surface water and a sky that seems to go on forever. Ranching had arrived first, and land promoters and hopeful settlers followed close behind. They were drawn by cheap land and the belief that farming communities could take root almost anywhere.
Many of these plains towns were built on hope more than certainty. A town needed water, a reason for people to gather and, ideally, a railroad or a county seat. Without those, it could fade within a generation. West Texas is dotted with the sites of such places, some marked only by a cemetery or a foundation.
Shafter Lake grew up beside one of the shallow, often-dry playa lakes that dot the region. For a while it was the first settlement in Andrews County and its largest town. Then the county's future moved elsewhere, and the town of Andrews became the community that lasted.
People & events
The house was built in 1908, in the town's hopeful early years. Its builders worked with what the land offered. Timber was scarce on the treeless plains and had to be hauled in at real cost, so they turned to the lake itself. Sand from Shafter Lake was mixed and pressed by hand into concrete blocks, and those blocks became the house's original frame.
That choice reflects a practical spirit typical of the time. Concrete block construction was spreading across rural America in the early twentieth century, because it let ordinary people make durable building material on site. Here, the material came straight from the ground the town was named for, which makes the house a product of its own landscape.
As Shafter Lake declined, its buildings disappeared one by one. They were moved, salvaged or worn away by wind and weather. The Irwin Ranch House is the one that stayed. In 1967 Texas recognized it as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, honoring it as the only surviving building of the county's first town.
Its place in the American story
Ghost towns are a key part of the story of the American West, and the Irwin Ranch House is a rare survivor of one. For every plains town that grew into a lasting community, others like Shafter Lake rose with confidence and then faded. Their fate turned on water, transportation and the decisions of people who chose where to put a courthouse or a rail line.
The house also speaks to how settlers adapted to new environments. The idea of building from local sand is the same instinct that produced sod houses on the northern prairies and adobe in the Southwest: use what the land gives you. It is a modest monument to that kind of frontier problem-solving.
It also reminds us that the frontier was not a single nineteenth-century moment. In West Texas, homesteading and town-building were still going on in the twentieth century, when much of the country had already been settled for generations.
If you visit
The house stands in the Andrews area of the West Texas plains. The landscape here is open, flat and enormous, and that is part of the experience. Standing near the last building of a vanished town, with wind sweeping across the flats, gives you a real sense of how exposed and hopeful those early settlers must have been.
Look closely at the concrete blocks if you can see them from a respectful distance. They were pressed by hand from local lake sand more than a century ago. Remember that this may be private property, so read the marker and enjoy the view without trespassing.
For a road trip, the Irwin Ranch House fits well into a drive across the Permian Basin and the Llano Estacado. The region is full of small museums, ranch heritage and reminders of how ranching, farming and later oil reshaped the area. Bring water, plan your fuel stops, and enjoy the big sky.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Shafter Lake Townsite
Andrews, TX
Platted in 1908, Shafter Lake was the first town in still-unorganized Andrews County, growing up around a water trough that served ranchers and freighters hauling between New Mexico and Texas. It took its name from the lake charted in Colonel William R. Shafter's 1875 survey, part of the campaigns that opened the Permian Basin to Anglo settlement. When the 1910 organization vote made Andrews the county seat, the town simply picked up and moved there, leaving Shafter Lake to fade away.
Shafter Lake Cemetery
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Just after the turn of the twentieth century, a burial ground took shape on the south bank of Shafter Lake, near a settlement that has since vanished from the map. It took its name from Colonel William R. Shafter, who had led a military expedition across this stretch of West Texas in 1875. The oldest legible stones date to 1909, and the once-neglected plot — now down to a dozen known graves — holds ranchers and travelers who died far from any town.
Whalen Lake School
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Two miles south of this spot, one of Andrews County's first schools opened in 1907 on land donated by Mrs. M. B. Dillard, near the edge of Whalen Lake. Built by Joe and Jake Mathis, the one-room school taught the children of homesteaders who were "proving up" their claims by living on the land for three years. It closed in 1910 and the building was moved once most settlers had fulfilled their claims and departed.
Andrews County
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Andrews County was created by the Texas legislature in 1876 and finally organized in 1910, its wide plains among the last parts of Texas to be settled. It honors Richard Andrews, remembered as the first man to fall in the Texas Revolution, killed at the Battle of Concepción near San Antonio on October 28, 1835. His name carried into the far West Texas frontier the memory of the fight for Texas independence.