Liberty Community and Finney Switch
Plainview, Hale County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1887 Joseph B. Leach and his brothers, John and Dee, immigrated to this area from Liberty, Kentucky. Joseph filed on a 160-acre homestead and built a half-dugout and sod house and a windmill. The Leach brothers often hauled freight for Plainview merchants. More families arrived in this five-mile square area. By 1892 there were enough children for a schoolhouse to be erected. Methodist and Baptist services and community activities were held in the building. The settlement was called "Liberty" for Joseph Leach's Kentucky home. William R. Finney and his family settled nearby in the early 1900s. When the Santa Fe Railroad from Amarillo to Plainview located a switch in 1906 on Finney's land, the site became "Finney Switch". Soon irrigation wells improved agriculture and dairy farming began. Liberty Schoolhouse was moved in 1912 and in 1920 a four-room brick building was erected south of Finney. About 1925 the first business, a store, opened. The Baptist and Methodist congregations built sanctuaries by 1940. With the consolidation of the Liberty and Plainview Schools in 1948 and changes in farming, the population decreased. 1979
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1887 the Leach brothers homesteaded here after immigrating from Liberty, Kentucky, building sod houses and a windmill and naming their settlement "Liberty" for their old home. A schoolhouse rose by 1892, and when the Santa Fe placed a switch on William Finney's land in 1906, a second hamlet called "Finney Switch" took shape nearby. Irrigation, dairy farming and small businesses followed, but school consolidation in 1948 and changing agriculture drained away the population.
Why it matters
Liberty and Finney Switch trace the full arc of countless High Plains communities — homestead, railroad, boom and quiet decline — that settled and then thinned across rural America.
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Related people
- · Joseph B. Leach
- · William R. Finney
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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