Notla Community
Perryton, Ochiltree County, Texas
Marker Inscription
At the turn of the 20th century, the State of Texas promoted sale of public school lands to encourage settlement of rural areas. By 1901, a community developed in southeastern Ochiltree County between Ochiltree, then the county seat, and Glazier, the nearest railroad point. R.E. Wamble (1876-1957) and his wife, Emma Jane (Taylor) (1861-1949), were among the first to purchase land and settle here. The community was originally called Half-Way for its location on the Ochiltree-Glazier Road. Earlier cattle ranch and wagon freighter trails comprised the local transportation network. William F. Taylor (1860-1947) and his wife, Helen (Short) (1869-1956), came in 1906, and the following year donated one acre to Ochiltree County for the community's Ridge School. Other early settlers included the Gerhart, Good, Norris and Westerfield families. The D-C-D Highway, developed in the 1910s from Dallas to Canadian to Denver, incorporated the Half-Way section of the Ochiltree-Glazier Road. This section of road later became FM 281. Frank L. Hamilton (1866-1960) and his wife, Mary Lucy (1872-1966), moved onto Section 209 in 1919. The Hamiltons opened a general store with two gas pumps, as the automobile was quickly replacing the horse and buggy. On Dec. 21, 1920, they applied for a post office named Alton, but as that name was already in use, Notla (Alton spelled backwards) became the new name for the community. Mary was postmaster for 22 years. Notla School, built in 1924 on the south side of the D-C-D Highway, replaced Ridge School as the center of the community. Over the years, many social and group events, including nondenominational Sunday School and church services, were held in the school. The post office closed in 1944 and the school, which merged with Perryton in 1939, burned in 1966. Today, residents and descendants recall the spirit of many generations. (2020)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
As Texas sold public school lands to spur settlement, families like the Wambles and Taylors carved out a community in southeastern Ochiltree County around 1901. Located halfway on the Ochiltree–Glazier Road, the settlement gained a school, a general store with gas pumps, and in 1920 a post office named Notla—'Alton' spelled backward, since Alton was taken. As automobiles and better roads reshaped the region, the post office closed in 1944 and the school burned in 1966, leaving mostly memory behind.
Why it matters
Notla captures the rise and quiet fading of the small farming communities that settlement-land policy scattered across the Texas Panhandle.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Frank L. Hamilton
- · Mary Lucy Hamilton
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of the Trading Post
Perryton, TX
C. E. Jones opened this trading post in 1874 along the Jones and Plummer Trail, the freight and cattle route running from Dodge City, Kansas, down to Mobeetie in the Texas Panhandle. At first it dealt food and cloth to Native peoples in exchange for hides; as ranching took hold, it became a supply stop for cattlemen hauling goods up from Dodge City. The State of Texas marked the site in 1936.
Ochiltree Townsite
Perryton, TX
Ochiltree County was created in 1876 and named for Texas jurist William Beck Ochiltree, but settlers only began digging dugouts near Wolf Creek in 1886, organizing the county in 1889 with their village as county seat. A two-story courthouse of Dodge City lumber rose in 1891 and doubled as church, school, and social hall; by 1903 the town of Ochiltree had 600 people, a bank, flour mill, and newspaper. When the Santa Fe Railway founded Perryton 8 miles north in 1919, the railroad lured residents with free lots and whole buildings were hauled to the new site.
Canadian River Trails
Canadian, TX
The trails along the Canadian River were ancient corridors of trade, hunting, and exploration long before Coronado followed them in 1541 chasing rumored cities of gold. Josiah Gregg led a Missouri trading party this way toward Santa Fe in 1840, and Captain R. B. Marcy escorted gold-seekers along the river in 1849. Through the 1870s and '80s hunters, cattlemen, and settlers used the same routes as the Panhandle was opened to settlement — a river whose name comes from a Spanish word for 'boxed-in.'
Parnell
Miami, TX
Roberts County had a single resident when it was created in 1876, and its early county-seat fight was pure frontier drama: after a fraud-tainted election, the legally chosen officials hired a gunman to seize the county safe, hauled it to this site, and built a two-story courthouse around it. The town — successively called Bennett, Oran, and finally Parnell — grew to a school, a saloon, and a scattering of homes. When Miami won the county seat in 1898, Parnell was abandoned.