The Founding of Bailey County
Muleshoe, Bailey County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Bailey County was created Aug. 21, 1876, and named for Peter James Bailey, a Kentucky lawyer killed at the Alamo during the Texas War for Independence. This was thinly settled cattle country; Bailey was attached for judicial purposes to Baylor County in 1876-1891, and to Castro County, 1892-1918. In Nov. 1918, Bailey County was finally organized. Its first officials were W. M. Wilterding, judge; H. A. Douglass, sheriff and tax assessor-collector; C. C. Mardis, clerk; G. P. Kuykendall, treasurer; E. G. Hoskins, inspector of hides and animals; J. B. Diggs, T. L. Snyder, C. E. Dotson and John S. McMurtry, commissioners. At the first meeting of the commissioners court, in Blackwater Valley State Bank on Jan. 16, 1919, C. D. Gupton was appointed justice of the peace. Muleshoe was designated county seat in a special election, April 12, 1919. A jail cell was purchased in June 1919 from neighboring Parmer County. In July a building contract was let for first courthouse -- a frame structure soon erected at a cost of $2,450. Since institution of its government, this 832 sq. mi. county, with its good water resources, has developed an outstanding agricultural economy. Its progress is a tribute to the standards of its pioneer settlers. (1968)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Bailey County was created on paper in 1876 and named for Peter James Bailey, a Kentucky lawyer who died defending the Alamo in the Texas Revolution. For decades it was thinly settled cattle country, governed from neighboring counties, until it was finally organized in 1918 and elected its first slate of officials. Muleshoe became the county seat in 1919, and a modest $2,450 frame courthouse soon rose over the newly organized High Plains county.
Why it matters
The forty-year gap between Bailey County's creation and its organization shows just how late and how slowly the arid Texas High Plains were settled compared with the rest of the state.
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Related people
- · Peter James Bailey
Related events
- · Battle of the Alamo
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Bailey County
Muleshoe, TX
Bailey County carries the name of Peter James Bailey, a young Kentucky lawyer who died defending the Alamo in 1836. Carved from the vast Bexar Territory, the county was created on paper in 1876 but not formally organized until 1918, when enough settlers had arrived on the high plains to sustain a government, with Muleshoe as its seat.
The Mule
Muleshoe, TX
This 1965 marker offers a wry tribute to the mule, ranking the sure-footed hybrid alongside the buffalo, hound, and longhorn as a maker of Texas history. It recalls how mules hauled cannon in war and freight to the far forts, scaled rock that horse and ox could not, and endured on little food — earning a place in the working life of the frontier and, the marker notes, of humankind since ancient times.
Old Muleshoe Ranch Cookhouse
Muleshoe, TX
This ranch cookhouse was built in Parmer County around 1897 and hauled to the Muleshoe Ranch about 1902. Local lore holds that a Dodge City couple moving to Texas found a shoe thrown by a mule, kept it for luck, and used it as the ranch's branding iron—giving the outfit, and eventually the town, its name. The humble cookhouse survives as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.
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.