Kermit's Oldest Home
Kermit, Winkler County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built by county clerk, 1910. (year Winkler County was organized). Owned by Mosleys Bairds. (1964)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1910 by the county clerk — the very year Winkler County was organized — this modest dwelling is recognized as the oldest home in Kermit. It later passed to the Mosley and Baird families and stands as a survivor from the town's earliest days.
Why it matters
As the oldest surviving house in a young oil-and-ranch town, it marks the moment a West Texas county seat first took shape.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Winkler County
Kermit, TX
Carved from Tom Green County and created in 1887, Winkler County waited until 1910 to fully organize, taking shape as a ranching frontier in far West Texas. It honors C. M. Winkler, a nineteenth-century statesman, soldier, and jurist, and centers on its seat at Kermit. Cattle grazing gave way, in time, to the petroleum wealth that came to define the region.
Kermit
Kermit, TX
Kermit rose on the far West Texas plains as the seat of Winkler County, organized in 1910 in ranch country near the New Mexico line. The town carries an unusual namesake: Kermit Roosevelt, son of President Theodore Roosevelt, who had visited a nearby ranch. What began as a ranching center was transformed by the discovery of oil and gas, making Winkler one of the state's leading energy-producing counties.
The Community Church
Kermit, TX
For fifty years West Texas settlers met their religious needs through camp meetings, circuit riders, and singings held at ranches and schoolhouses. When this church was organized in 1928, it worshiped in Kermit's old 1910 courthouse, bought for a single dollar. After oil transformed the region, generous ranchers built the present brick edifice — the first brick building in Kermit — on the site of that first church, dedicating it in 1938.
Old Duval Townsite
Kermit, TX
Winkler County's first post office opened near here in 1908 on the John Howe ranch, serving 300 people with mail twice a week. The Pueblo Investment Company promoted the Duval townsite nationwide, opening it in March 1910 with free lots, a picnic, and a cowboy tournament—but when Kermit won the county seat, Duval withered. After oil was struck in 1928 its townsite rights were canceled, leaving the ownership of many 1910 lots tangled to this day.