Potter County, Establishing of
Amarillo, Potter County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Named for Robert Potter, Secretary of the Navy (1836) and Senator (1840-42) of the Republic of Texas. In territory ranged by Apache, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa Indians, and since 1600 familiar to Spanish military parties and French traders. On established routes of the Great Spanish Road from Santa Fe to San Antonio (1786) and the Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail of 1840 which was followed in 1849 by California gold seekers. Although still uninhabited, the county was created in 1876 by Texas Legislature. The years 1874-78 saw Indians expelled and buffalo replaced by longhorns. In 1877 the famous LX Ranch was established, with headquarters 20 miles north of this site. The Frying Pan, first large ranch fenced with barbed wire, in 1881 built its headquarters 16 miles to the west. Railroad construction across the Texas Panhandle made local government desirable. LX and Frying Pan cowboys were the electors who voted on Aug. 30, 1887, to organize Potter County. This county was discovery site (1918) of the vast Panhandle-Hugoton Gas Field. It is noted as location of Alibates National Monument (established 1965), an aboriginal flint quarry, with ruins of prehistoric Indian villages inhabited as early as 10,000 B.C. (1970).
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The land that became Potter County lay in country ranged by Apache, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa peoples and crossed by old Spanish and trail routes, including the Great Spanish Road of 1786 and the Fort Smith–Santa Fe Trail followed by 1849 gold seekers. Created by the legislature in 1876 while still empty, it saw Indigenous peoples forced out and buffalo replaced by longhorns, the great LX and barbed-wire Frying Pan ranches established, and finally organized by cowboy voters in 1887. Named for Republic of Texas official Robert Potter, it later gave up the vast Panhandle-Hugoton gas field and holds the Alibates flint quarries worked by prehistoric peoples as early as 10,000 B.C.
Why it matters
The county's story compresses thousands of years of Panhandle history—from ancient flint-knappers to Comanche horsemen to the ranchers and railroads of the cattle frontier—into one place.
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Related people
- · Robert Potter
Related events
- · Organization of Potter County
- · Establishment of the LX Ranch
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Canadian River
Amarillo, TX
For more than twelve thousand years the Canadian River served as a travel corridor and home, supporting stone and adobe Native villages between the 12th and 14th centuries. It was among the first interior rivers known to European explorers: Coronado crossed it in 1541 hunting the fabled Quivira, Oñate followed in 1601, French traders came in the 1700s, and by the 1840s it guided Santa Fe traders and California gold seekers under military escort. Even its disputed name carries this layered past.
The Canadian River
Amarillo, TX
For more than 12,000 years the Canadian River drew people to its banks, from ancient travelers to the stone-and-adobe village builders of the 1100s–1300s. It became one of the first interior rivers Europeans knew: Coronado forded it in 1541 chasing the golden rumor of Quivira, and Oñate followed in 1601. Later it guided French traders, Santa Fe merchants like Josiah Gregg, and California-bound emigrants escorted west by Captain Marcy in 1849.
Panhandle
Panhandle, TX
As the buffalo herds vanished and Native peoples were forced onto reservations in the 1880s, the town of Panhandle rose as the region's early capital and, in 1887, the terminus of the Santa Fe Railway. Immigrant trains delivered colonists who plowed the old range into wheat fields, and the town became the seat of Carson County in 1888. Nearby lie the area's first oil well of 1921 and the site of a World War II ordnance plant.
Amarillo
Amarillo, TX
When the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad pushed through the Panhandle in 1887, Colorado City merchants led by J. T. Berry platted Amarillo to serve their South Plains trade, and cowboys elected it the seat of newly organized Potter County. Ranchers J. F. Glidden and H. B. Sanborn of the Frying Pan Ranch soon lured residents to a new townsite addition, and from 1892 to 1897 Amarillo was the nation's largest rural cattle-shipping point. Sanborn's maneuvering to win a key rail junction in 1898 sealed the town's future as the commercial center of the Texas Panhandle.