Site of Parmerton
Bovina, Parmer County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(Elevation 4,202 feet) Founded as Parmer Switch on Pecos & Northern Texas Railroad in 1898. In 1906, became site of a model farm. Using Campbell dry farming method, run by Capitol Freehold Land & Investment Co. In 1907, Parmerton Townsite Co. bought 200 acres of the farm and laid out a town, which was designed first county seat that same year. A post office was soon established. When, in late 1907, Farwell was elected new county seat, Parmerton's citizens departed, taking homes and other buildings with them. Only the railroad switch marks the site today. (1971)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Parmerton began as Parmer Switch on the Pecos & Northern Texas Railroad in 1898 and grew when a model farm using the Campbell dry-farming method took root there in 1906. A townsite company laid out streets in 1907, and Parmerton briefly became the county seat with its own post office. But when nearby Farwell won the county seat later that year, residents literally packed up and moved their houses away, leaving only the railroad switch to mark the spot.
Why it matters
Parmerton is a classic High Plains ghost town, showing how railroads, dry-farming experiments, and county-seat rivalries could raise and erase a Texas town within a single decade.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Friona
Friona, TX
Friona was founded in 1898 by the vast XIT Ranch as a shipping point on the new Pecos & Northern railroad, first called Frio after a nearby draw. A land company soon launched a colonization drive, luring Midwestern settlers with promises of fertile soil and a healthful climate, and building a hotel, bank, and livery. Renamed Friona when its post office opened in 1907, the town lost a bitter county-seat fight to Farwell but grew into a regional farming center that dubbed itself the "Grain Sorghum Capital of the World."
Bovina
Bovina, TX
Bovina began as the Hay Hook Line Camp of the legendary XIT Ranch, the three-million-acre spread Texas granted in payment for building its state capitol. When the Pecos & Northern Texas Railroad reached the site in 1898, cattle poured onto rail cars bound for eastern markets, and for a time this was one of the largest shipping points in the nation — cowhands called it "Bull Town" before the town chose the name Bovina in 1899. From a frontier line camp it grew into the market center of a rich irrigated-farming county.
Parmer County
Farwell, TX
Parmer County was created in 1876 and named for Martin Parmer, the 'Ringtailed Panther' who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. Most of its land was first held by the vast XIT Ranch, granted to the Capitol Syndicate in payment for building the Texas Capitol, and in 1890 the county's population numbered only 70. When the railroad arrived in 1904 and the syndicate began selling land, settlers streamed in to carve out small farms, and Farwell became the county seat.
Old Hurley
Muleshoe, TX
Old Hurley was born of optimism in 1907, promoted by a land company that surveyed a townsite, plowed furrows to mark future streets, and named it for New Mexico political figure Patrick J. Hurley. A store, hotel, livery, post office, church, and school soon followed as settlers arrived. But when the railroad bypassed the town in 1913 and Muleshoe won the county seat in 1918, Hurley withered and died.