Post
Post, Garza County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded 1907 by industrialist C. W. Post. Early abundant water supply by windmills above Caprock. Later from White River Lake. Extensive ranching and farming. Postex Cotton Mills, making sheets and pillowcases, furnish year-round employment. Service center for over 1,750 oil wells in county. 1967
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Cereal magnate C. W. Post founded this planned town on the Caprock in 1907, watering it first by windmill and later from White River Lake. Post envisioned a self-sufficient community sustained by ranching, farming, and industry — anchored by the Postex Cotton Mills, whose sheets and pillowcases gave the town year-round work. By the 1960s it also served as a hub for more than 1,750 oil wells across Garza County.
Why it matters
Post is a rare surviving example of an early-20th-century "model town" built by a single industrialist's utopian vision, testing whether a businessman could engineer prosperity on the West Texas plains.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the first years of the twentieth century, the South Plains of West Texas were still largely ranch country. The Caprock Escarpment, the dramatic edge of the high, flat Llano Estacado, divided the rugged breaks below from the vast tableland above. Railroads, windmills, and new farming methods were beginning to open the region to towns and cultivation, and promoters saw a land of opportunity waiting to be settled.
Nationally, it was the Progressive Era, a time of big ideas about improving society through planning, efficiency, and reform. Some wealthy industrialists went further and imagined whole towns built to their designs, orderly places where good planning might produce prosperous, upright citizens. These "model towns" were one of the era's more ambitious experiments.
Water was the question that governed everything on the South Plains. Rainfall was limited and unpredictable, and any town hoping to grow needed a dependable supply. Windmills pumping groundwater became the lifeline of settlements across the region, and later generations turned to reservoirs to secure their future.
People & events
The town's founder was C. W. Post, an American industrialist who had built a fortune in the breakfast-food business with products such as Postum and Grape-Nuts, based in Battle Creek, Michigan. Post had big ideas, and in 1907 he turned them toward West Texas, founding a town here that he envisioned as a carefully planned community where families could buy land, build homes, and prosper.
In its early days the town drew its water from windmills above the Caprock, which the marker describes as an abundant supply. Later, the source shifted to White River Lake. Post is also widely remembered for his colorful experiments in trying to coax rain from the dry West Texas sky by setting off explosives, an effort that reflected both his boundless confidence and the region's endless worry about water.
Over the decades, the town Post founded built a diverse economy. Ranching and farming spread across the surrounding country. The Postex Cotton Mills, which turned cotton into sheets and pillowcases, provided steady, year-round jobs, which was a valuable thing in an agricultural area where work often rose and fell with the seasons. By the time the marker was placed in 1967, Post had also become a service center for more than 1,750 oil wells across the county, adding a whole new industry to the mix.
Its place in the American story
Post is a rare surviving example of a town created by the vision of a single industrialist. In the early twentieth century, several American businessmen tried to build model communities, testing whether careful planning and private capital could create prosperity from scratch. Many such experiments faded, which makes a town that endured all the more interesting.
The town also tells a larger story about how the Great Plains were settled and sustained. Its path, from windmills to a reservoir, from ranching to farming to manufacturing to oil, traces the stages by which much of West Texas moved from open range to a mixed modern economy. At each step, water and natural resources shaped what was possible.
Finally, Post links two very different corners of American life: the booming consumer industries of the Midwest, where breakfast cereal made fortunes, and the wide-open frontier of the Southwest. It's a vivid example of how industrial wealth from the East and Midwest flowed into developing the West.
If you visit
Post sits near the foot of the Caprock, and the drive into town gives you a feel for the dramatic change in landscape between the rugged breaks and the high plains above. Look for the town's orderly layout, a clue to its origins as a planned community rather than one that grew up by accident.
As you explore, think about the ingredients the marker names: windmills and water, ranches and farms, a cotton mill, and oil wells. It's a great way to help kids understand how a town makes a living. You might even ask them what they'd need to build a brand-new town from nothing in a dry land like this.
Post makes a natural stop on a road trip across West Texas, whether you're heading toward Lubbock and the high plains or exploring the canyons and breaks below the Caprock. It pairs well with a broader look at how the region's ranching, farming, and oil heritage shaped the small towns that dot this big, open country.
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 people
- · C. W. Post
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Charles W. Post
Post, TX
Charles W. Post (1854-1914), the internationally known creator of Post Cereals and an advertising genius, turned his fortune to town-building in 1906. Buying the Curry Comb Ranch and adjoining land — some 225,000 acres — he laid out Post City as a self-contained model community of towns and farms. He financed and supervised the work without profit, offering settlers homes and businesses far below cost in pursuit of his vision of debt-free private ownership.
C. W. Post Home
Post, TX
Cereal-foods millionaire C. W. Post built this home in 1912 in the very town he founded, planting a colony on the West Texas plains that he stocked with settlers by selling land on generous terms and seeding new industries. True to his slogan "I Want Quality," he fitted the house with solid oak doors, redwood floors, and leather wallpaper. Post was as much a town-builder as a breakfast magnate, promoting agriculture and settlement across the region.
Old Post Sanitarium
Post, TX
Built in 1912 by the Double U Company of cereal magnate C. W. Post, this was the first hospital in its corner of West Texas and boasted remarkably modern facilities for its time — an X-ray laboratory, private rooms with steam heat, a diet kitchen, and nurses' training. It rose in the planned town Post created out of the ranchlands he bought on the plains. Its arrival brought medicine and modern comfort to a still-raw frontier region.
The Post-Hundley House
Post, TX
Cereal magnate Charles W. Post founded the town of Post as a model community, and this native-stone cottage — quarried by hand from the nearby Caprock and built by his Double U Company in 1907 — served as his residence during frequent visits. The design came from a staffer at his Battle Creek, Michigan headquarters. Later families preserved the structure through the twentieth century.