Rankin
Rankin, Upton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Made Upton County Seat in 1921. Named for F. E. Rankin, who gave site for railway station-- the center of community life over and above its business dealings; was scene of cowboy dances on Saturday nights, church services on Sundays. Home of Rankin Museum and of world champion rodeo stars Toots Mansfield and Allen Holder. Erected by Upton County Historical Survey Committee.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Rankin became the seat of Upton County in 1921, taking its name from F. E. Rankin, who donated the land for the railway station that anchored the town. More than a shipping point, the station was the hub of community life—host to Saturday-night cowboy dances and Sunday church services alike. The town later produced world-champion rodeo stars Toots Mansfield and Allen Holder.
Why it matters
Rankin embodies the West Texas pattern in which a railroad depot, not a courthouse alone, made a town—and where ranching culture matured into the competitive sport of rodeo.
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Related people
- · F. E. Rankin
- · Toots Mansfield
- · Allen Holder
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Upland First Upton County Seat
Rankin, TX
Platted in 1908 by Henry Halff and his son, Upland was conceived as a stop on a projected St. Louis–to–Chihuahua rail line and sat near the old Butterfield stage route. Named the first seat of Upton County in 1910, it gained a stone courthouse and a school, but when new rail lines bypassed it and drought set in, the town withered. By 1921 its buildings had been hauled off to Rankin, and Upland was left to the prairie.
Elliott Ranch
Rankin, TX
George Elliott pushed onto the wide-open West Texas range in 1880, building near the old Butterfield Stage Road and hauling water fifty miles from the head of the Concho. His ranch house served as the first polling place of the county that formed in 1887 and later anchored the vast Halff-brothers 'Quien Sabe' and Circle Dot cattle operations. As Upton County organized, it did double duty as a mail station, salt house, and cowboy bunkhouse.
Site of First Church in Upton County
Rankin, TX
When pioneers abandoned nearby Upland and resettled at Rankin in 1912 along the Kansas City, Mexico & Orient Railway, they first worshipped in the railroad depot before building a shared church on this corner. Future oil baron Ira G. Yates led the donors, and Baptist, Church of Christ, and Methodist trustees jointly oversaw the "Rankin Union Church," finished in 1915. For a time it also housed the local school and remained the county's only church until the late 1920s.
Camp Melvin and the Pontoon Crossing of the Pecos River
Iraan, TX
Where the often flood-swollen Pecos River could be crossed, travelers found a lifeline for centuries. Spanish explorer Juan Domínguez de Mendoza camped and forded here in 1684, trader Henry Connelly used the same spot in 1840, and in 1868 the U.S. Army — seeking a safer route than Comanche-plagued Horsehead Crossing — built a floating pontoon bridge whose landings could shift with the river's width. To guard travelers the Army established nearby Camp Melvin, but by the 1920s better roads had left the crossing to history.