Site of Chicago
Lamesa, Dawson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(1/4 mi. N) W.C. Bishop of Chicago, Ill., and wealthy lumberman George N. Fletcher established the OTO (later Bar TO) ranch about 1887 on Fletcher's extensive landholdings in Dawson County. A post office was opened at the ranch headquarters on May 15, 1889, and named Chicago, both in honor of Bishop's home town and in humorous reference to the sparse population of the area. The postal facility served other large ranches in this vicinity, such as C. C. Slaughter's Long S. In the 1890s, Fletcher left the ranching venture, and A. F. Crowley and W. H. Godair became Bishop's partners. By that time, a village had begun to grow up around the post office. B. A. Oden served as OTO ranch foreman and postmaster of Chicago from 1894 to 1903. When Walter Stemmons replaced him in both positions in 1904, the settlement was renamed Stemmons. The same year, a post office was established in the new town of Lamesa, two miles south of Chicago. Dawson County was organized in 1905, and both towns entered the contest for county seat. When Lamesa won, residents of Chicago quickly relocated their homes and businesses there. The school and Baptist and Methodist churches also moved to Lamesa, within days, the community of Chicago had disappeared. (1977)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Around 1887, Chicago lumberman W.C. Bishop and George N. Fletcher founded the OTO (later Bar TO) ranch in Dawson County, and in 1889 a post office opened at its headquarters — named Chicago partly in wry jest at the empty surrounding plains. A village grew up around it, serving nearby spreads like C.C. Slaughter's Long S, until Lamesa won the county-seat contest in 1905. Within days Chicago's homes, businesses, school, and churches had picked up and moved south, and the community vanished.
Why it matters
The story of Chicago's sudden disappearance is a classic frontier tale of how a county-seat vote could make or unmake a West Texas town almost overnight.
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Related people
- · W.C. Bishop
- · George N. Fletcher
- · C.C. Slaughter
- · B.A. Oden
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pioneer Cemetery
Lamesa, TX
This was the first burial ground in Dawson County, donated by Frank Conner, with its first grave dug in November 1904 for Mrs. G. W. Pate, who had suggested the cemetery's creation. Formally closed in 1907, it holds two dozen of the region's earliest settlers, several of them infants. A lone later burial joined a spouse in 1949.
Dawson County
Lamesa, TX
Dawson County honors Nicholas Mosby Dawson, a Texas patriot who fought at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836 and later fell in the 1842 clash known as Dawson's Massacre during the turbulent years of the Republic of Texas. The county was created in 1858, recreated in 1876 from Bexar Territory, and finally organized in 1905, with Lamesa as its seat. Its name carries the memory of the sacrifices that won and defended Texas independence.
O'Donnell
O'Donnell, TX
Named for railroad promoter Tom J. O'Donnell, this Lynn County town sprang up in 1909 when the Santa Fe pushed a new line across the South Plains from Slaton toward Lamesa. Founders built a hotel and store, celebrated the first train with a Fourth of July picnic in 1910, and drew churches with free lots before incorporating in 1923. By the mid-20th century O'Donnell had become a dryland cotton center boasting what was briefly the world's largest gin—and the hometown of actor Dan Blocker.
New Moore
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New Moore rose in 1924 on the old Singleton Slash L Ranch, after a Dallas buyer carved 17,000 acres into quarter sections and sold them cheap to families hungry for land. Life in the little farming community turned on its schools, general store, church, and cotton gin, but the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and the crushing drought of 1953 wore the settlers down. When the New Moore School closed that same year, families drifted toward the cities and the community faded away.