Page 33 - Amarillo Senior Link Magazine Summer 2021 - Online Magazine

LOCAL HISTORY

by donating property on top of available as an optional add-on.
a rise west of Plainview in 1908. By 1913, Hale County agricultural
By 1913, the campus consisted products of all kinds were winning
of two red brick buildings: more competitions than any other
Matador Hall and what is now county at the state fair. At nearly
Gates Hall, which was declared the same time, a similar exhibit
“absolutely fireproof.” The was entered in the first ever state
town also put in a bid for what fair in Oklahoma, competing in
became Texas Tech University, the “foreign” category against
but they lost out to Lubbock. an exhibit from the Dominion of
Canada and one sponsored by the
By 1910, Hale County had more 1893 - Downtown Plainview - A hotel carried on eight Great Northern Railroad, consisting
wagons pulled by 32 horses is successfully moved from
than 100,000 acres in cultivation, Dimmitt (a distance of 45 miles). of products from Montana,
including crops such as alfalfa, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and
fruit orchards, wheat, and oats. their first agricultural products Wyoming. Hale County’s exhibit
Plainview had a population of just to the Texas State Fair. In 1912, won the top prize.
over 5,000 people, electric lights the Pearson Syndicate of England
and sidewalks around town, an purchased 60,000 acres of Hale Thus, a mere forty years after its
County land for 1.5 million dollars. creation and with thirty years of
The company sectioned off the occupation under its belt, Hale
irrigated agricultural development County and Plainview were one
into 85 model farms, each with a of the fastest growing and most
four- to five-room home, a well successful areas of West Texas.
and windmill for domestic use, Events of the coming decades,
an outhouse, barn, milk house, however, would test the durability
irrigation plant, complete fencing, of the county’s citizens.
twenty to eighty acres of irrigated
farmland, and ten to twenty acres Photos supplied by The Portal to Texas
planted with alfalfa seed. Up to History at texashistory.unt.edu
an acre of fruit orchard also was
Downtown Plainview on the west
side of the square - 1897
opera house, a flour mill, two
grain elevators, about ten church
congregations, chapters of most of
the major fraternal and religious
orders, and a baseball team. The
Texas Land and Development
Company sponsored trips to the
county, by train, so 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

Amarillo Senior Link 33