The H. B. Sanborn House
Amarillo, Potter County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built 1902 in 500 block, South Buchanan, by principal early developer of Amarillo, Henry Bradley Sanborn (1845-1912). At original site were also owner's office building, carriage house, stables for six coach horses, and a deer park. After death of Sanborn, the home was relocated here in 1921. Losses from the original include brick chimneys and cupola with weathervane. This is now one of the oldest houses in city of Amarillo. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1971
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1902, this house was the Amarillo home of Henry Bradley Sanborn, a principal early developer of the city, complete with an office, carriage house, stables for six coach horses, and a deer park. After Sanborn's death, the home was moved to this site in 1921, losing its original chimneys and cupola along the way. It endures as one of the oldest houses in Amarillo.
Why it matters
Sanborn helped will Amarillo into being on the Texas Panhandle plains, and his home stands as a monument to the boosters who built the cattle-country towns of the West.
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Related people
- Β· Henry Bradley Sanborn
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Henry B. Sanborn Building (1903)
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Built in 1903, this Amarillo building is tied to Henry Bradley Sanborn, one of the men most responsible for the city's very existence. Sanborn, who made his fortune promoting barbed wire, helped relocate and establish Amarillo on higher, better-drained ground in the 1880s, earning him a reputation as a founder of the town. By the early 1900s his name was woven through the young Panhandle city's growth. A building raised for him marks the confidence of a frontier settlement maturing into a permanent community.
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Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, The Amarillo Story
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The arrival of a railroad across the Panhandle gave rise to Amarillo, made county seat of Potter County in 1887, and for a decade the town enjoyed a trade monopoly over the South Plains, ranking as the nation's largest rural cattle-shipping point in the 1890s. When a rival routing threatened to bypass it in 1898, citizens persuaded the Santa Fe to make Amarillo the terminus of its new line; the railroad then moved its headquarters there and, by 1908, folded the town into its transcontinental main line. Branch lines followed, cementing Amarillo as the commercial hub of the High Plains.
Amarillo
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When the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad pushed through the Panhandle in 1887, Colorado City merchants led by J. T. Berry platted Amarillo to serve their South Plains trade, and cowboys elected it the seat of newly organized Potter County. Ranchers J. F. Glidden and H. B. Sanborn of the Frying Pan Ranch soon lured residents to a new townsite addition, and from 1892 to 1897 Amarillo was the nation's largest rural cattle-shipping point. Sanborn's maneuvering to win a key rail junction in 1898 sealed the town's future as the commercial center of the Texas Panhandle.