Migrant Labor Camps of Lubbock County
Lubbock, Lubbock County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Early Hispanic residents of frontier Lubbock County included ranch hands in the 1880s. Railroad lines brought many workers to the South Plains, the majority recruited from El Paso. Rail companies built row houses near construction sites, and Lubbock’s rail labor camps became ethnic enclaves for Hispanic workers. One of the early settlements southwest of town was called Shipley’s Railroad Camp. Cotton raising, which began as a side crop on area ranches, also attracted temporary labor as production increased. One field labor camp developed near the Slaton roundhouse. Cotton pickers from south Texas and Mexico arrived in a seasonal migration, although some found year-round ranch work. While on the migration circuit, Hispanic citizens lived in large labor camps throughout the county and along every major highway into Lubbock. In the city, a barrio called “Mexican Town” or the “Chihuahua District” developed in this locale. Standard homes were tents or simple structures, and the neighborhood was poverty-ridden and overcrowded. The Great Depression worsened living conditions for most residents but especially for the working poor. Mexican migrants and Hispanic citizens also faced segregated facilities including schools, theaters and restaurants. In 1948 the city council paid for a corrugated metal building at the largest camp as a labor recruiting site. In May 1970, a tornado destroyed much of the neighborhood, and of the twenty-six people killed nearly half were barrio residents. By 2000, Hispanics made up about one-third of the city population and one-half of the public school enrollment. Lubbock also boasted dozens of Hispanic organizations advocating for business, civil rights, leadership, families, the arts, youth and education. Aztlan Park is the site of the former migrant labor camp. (2008)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
From the 1880s onward, Hispanic workers shaped Lubbock County—first as ranch hands, then as the rail crews recruited out of El Paso to build the lines that opened the South Plains. Railroad row houses and cotton-picking camps hardened into ethnic enclaves, and in the city a barrio known as "Mexican Town" or the "Chihuahua District" took root amid poverty, segregation, and overcrowding. The Great Depression and a devastating 1970 tornado both fell hardest on these residents, yet the community grew into a third of the city and built dozens of civic and civil-rights organizations.
Why it matters
It records how Mexican and Mexican American labor built the infrastructure and agriculture of West Texas while enduring segregation—a story of endurance and community-building central to the American Southwest.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
This marker gathers up more than a century of life on the South Plains of West Texas, beginning in the 1880s, when Lubbock County was raw frontier and its earliest Hispanic residents worked as ranch hands on the open range. From the very start, in other words, Mexican and Mexican American labor was woven into the founding economy of the region.
The great change came with the railroads. Rail lines reaching the South Plains needed workers to build and run them, and companies recruited heavily — the majority, the marker tells us, brought in from El Paso. To house these crews, the railroads threw up rows of company houses beside the tracks, and those rail camps, like Shipley's Railroad Camp southwest of town, hardened over time into lasting ethnic enclaves.
Then came cotton. What had started as a side crop on the ranches grew into the defining industry of the plains, and cotton is enormously labor-hungry at harvest. A seasonal migration took shape — pickers coming up from South Texas and Mexico, some settling into year-round ranch work — and labor camps spread throughout the county and along every major highway leading into Lubbock. In the city itself, a barrio known as "Mexican Town" or the "Chihuahua District" took root in this locale.
People & events
This is a marker about a community rather than a single hero, and its power lies in the everyday lives it records. In the barrio, homes were often tents or simple structures; the neighborhood was, in the marker's own plain words, poverty-ridden and overcrowded. When the Great Depression struck, it worsened conditions for nearly everyone, but it fell hardest on the working poor who had the least cushion to begin with.
Alongside poverty came the daily indignity of segregation. Mexican migrants and Hispanic citizens faced separate and unequal facilities — segregated schools, theaters, and restaurants — the same walls of exclusion raised against Mexican Americans across much of the Southwest in these decades. A telling detail from 1948 captures the era's attitude precisely: the city council paid for a corrugated metal building at the largest camp, and its purpose was labor recruiting — the community valued first for its work.
Then came the disaster that seals the marker's memory. In May 1970, a tornado tore through Lubbock and destroyed much of this neighborhood. Of the twenty-six people killed, nearly half were residents of the barrio — a single night in which the community's vulnerability and its losses were laid bare.
Its place in the American story
The story told here is, in miniature, the story of the American Southwest. The pattern by which Mexican and Mexican American workers built the railroads and then harvested the cotton — supplying the muscle for the infrastructure and agriculture that made the region prosper, while being pushed to its social margins — repeated across Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California through the twentieth century.
The seasonal migrant circuit the marker describes, with families following the crops and living in camps strung along the highways, was a defining feature of American agriculture for generations, and the fight over the conditions in those camps became one of the great civil-rights and labor causes of the mid-century nation.
What makes this marker's arc so resonant is its ending. By 2000, Hispanics made up about a third of Lubbock's population and half of its public-school enrollment, and the city counted dozens of Hispanic organizations working for business, civil rights, leadership, families, the arts, youth, and education. That is the classic American movement from a labor force held at the margins to a community claiming a central place in civic life — endurance turned into belonging.
If you visit
Aztlan Park stands on the site of the former migrant labor camp, and that is the fact to carry with you as you walk it. This is ordinary, living ground — a neighborhood park rather than a monument district — and the quiet ordinariness is exactly the point: history like this happened in the everyday places where working families lived.
Bring the marker's timeline with you and let it reshape what you see. Picture the railroad row houses and the tents, the camps that once lined the highways into town, and the barrio that grew here through the Depression and the hard years of segregation. Then hold that against the 1970 tornado that struck this very locale, and the park's calm takes on real weight.
Read the whole inscription patiently, because its arc is the reward — it moves from ranch hands in the 1880s all the way to a community that became a third of the city and built dozens of its own institutions. Visited with that sweep in mind, this becomes one of the more quietly moving stops in Lubbock, a place that honors the people who built West Texas and made a lasting home in it.
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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Related events
- · 1970 Lubbock tornado
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