Page 23 - Senior Link Magazine Summer 2021- Online Magazine

HISTORY OF LUBBOCK
LOCAL HISTORY

by donating property on top of at the state fair. At nearly the same
a rise west of Plainview in 1908. time, a similar exhibit was entered in
By 1913, the campus consisted the first ever state fair in Oklahoma,
of two red brick buildings: competing in the “foreign”
Matador Hall and what is now category against an exhibit from
Gates Hall, which was declared the Dominion of Canada and one
“absolutely fireproof.” The sponsored by the Great Northern
town also put in a bid for what Railroad, consisting of products
became Texas Tech University, from Montana, Washington,
but they lost out to Lubbock. Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming. Hale
County’s exhibit won the top prize.
By 1910, Hale County had 1893 - Downtown Plainview - A hotel carried on eight
wagons pulled by 32 horses is successfully moved from
more than 100,000 acres in Dimmitt (a distance of 45 miles). Thus, a mere forty years after its
cultivation, including crops creation and with thirty years of
such as alfalfa, fruit orchards, wheat, and oats. Plainview occupation under its belt, Hale County and Plainview
had a population of just over 5,000 people, electric lights were one of the fastest growing and most successful
and sidewalks around town, an opera house, a flour mill, areas of West Texas. Events of the coming decades,
two grain elevators, about ten church congregations, however, would test the durability of the county’s
chapters of most citizens.
of the major
fraternal and Photos supplied by The Portal to Texas History at texashistory.
religious orders, unt.edu
and a baseball
team. The
Texas Land and
Development
Company
sponsored trips
to the county,
by train, so
Downtown Plainview on the west
side of the square - 1897 prospective
settlers could
see the land before purchasing it. The company also
set up a pumping plant next to the railroad depot
to fill an artificial lake. The municipal band played
concerts during the summer from an island gazebo in
the middle of the lake, while locals and visitors swam,
fished, and picnicked on its banks.

Farmers dug the first irrigation well in Hale County in
1911. That same year, area residents submitted their
first agricultural products to the Texas State Fair. In
1912, the Pearson Syndicate of England purchased
60,000 acres of Hale County land for 1.5 million
dollars. The company sectioned off the irrigated
agricultural development into 85 model farms, each
with a four- to five-room home, a well and windmill
for domestic use, an outhouse, barn, milk house,
irrigation plant, complete fencing, twenty to eighty
acres of irrigated farmland, and ten to twenty acres
planted with alfalfa seed. Up to an acre of fruit orchard
also was available as an optional add-on. By 1913,
Hale County agricultural products of all kinds were
winning more competitions than any other county

Lubbock Senior Link 23