Shafter Lake Townsite

🏛️The era

For most of the nineteenth century, the high, dry plains of far West Texas were the homeland of powerful Native American nations, especially the Comanche. In the 1870s, the U.S. Army waged a series of campaigns across this region that broke Native resistance on the southern plains and forced the tribes onto reservations. That outcome opened the land to ranchers and, later, to towns.

Andrews County was created on paper in the 1870s, but for decades almost no one lived there. It was ranch country: wide, windswept, and short on water. The county had no government of its own and relied on others for its official business until settlement grew large enough to organize.

By the early 1900s that was beginning to change. Ranchers and freighters crossed the region carrying goods and supplies between eastern New Mexico and Texas. On these dry plains, any reliable water source became a natural gathering point, and that is how Shafter Lake got its start.

👥People & events

The town took its name from a lake charted during an 1875 survey led by Colonel William R. Shafter. Shafter's expeditions mapped much of this then-unfamiliar country, and his campaigns against the Native nations of the plains helped clear the way for settlement. The marker credits him with opening the Permian Basin. It is worth remembering that what the U.S. Army saw as opening land meant, for the Comanche and other peoples, the loss of their homeland and way of life. Shafter went on to a long military career and later commanded American forces in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.

The town itself was platted in 1908 and was the first town in Andrews County. At its heart was a water trough built by John Underwood of Shafter Lake Sand and Gravel. Freighters hauling goods from Jal and Monument, New Mexico, into Texas, along with local ranchers, stopped here to water their animals. The town grew up around that trough.

The townspeople had big hopes. The site of the trough was set aside for a courthouse, a clear sign they expected Shafter Lake to become the county seat once Andrews County organized.

That moment came in 1910, and it did not go their way. The vote that organized the county gave the county seat to Andrews instead. Rather than wither in place, the town picked up and moved to Andrews, leaving the Shafter Lake site behind.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Shafter Lake is a perfect example of the county-seat contests that shaped the American West. In newly organized counties, the town that won the courthouse usually won the future: government business, lawyers, merchants, and settlers followed. Losing often meant fading away. All over the plains, towns rose and fell on the result of a single vote.

The town's story also captures how settlement worked in arid country. Water drew people and decided where roads ran and towns grew. A trough on a freight route could be enough to start a community.

Finally, the marker connects to a hard chapter of national history. The army campaigns of the 1870s on the southern plains brought the region under U.S. control at a great cost to Native peoples. The Permian Basin that later became famous for oil was first ranch land made available by those campaigns.

🧭If you visit

The marker stands near Andrews, in the wide open country of the Permian Basin. Today this area is known for oil fields and big skies, and it can be hard to picture a small freighters' town here, but that is part of the magic of a ghost-town site.

The marker notes the water trough is on the site. Look for it, and imagine the teams of horses and mules that once stopped here after long hauls across the plains from New Mexico. Then picture the courthouse that the townspeople planned but never got.

Andrews, the town that won the county seat and absorbed Shafter Lake's people, is close by and an easy add-on. This stop fits well on any drive across West Texas or between Texas and New Mexico. Bring water, check the weather, and enjoy the vast, quiet landscape that early settlers knew.