Cochran County

Morton won the county seat over a rival built for the job. After C. C. Slaughter's heirs divided his Cochran County land, Minnie Slaughter Veal's selling agent Morton J. Smith founded Morton, while the Slaughter family, twice disappointed in seeking a railroad, founded Ligon four miles south. Morton won the 1924 vote seventy-nine to twenty. When the Santa Fe built in from Lubbock in 1925, Whiteface, Chipley, Lehman and Bledsoe sprang up, and Ligon moved to become Lehman. In the Dust Bowl years, new dunes reached twenty-eight feet.

What the plaque says

Cochran County Created August 21, 1876, from Bexar County. Named for a native of New Jersey, Robert Cochran, a private who died for Texas Independence in the siege of the Alamo. Indian hostilities and the distance to market and supplies made settlement slow. The 1900 census listed 25 cowboys. In 1910 there were 75 persons; then 67 in 1920. Organized May 6, 1924, with Morton as county seat. Oil discovery and development of irrigation caused rapid growth, and made it a farm and petroleum center. Site of Silver Lake, a saline lake known to early Spanish explorers as Laguna Quemado. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge — 16 mi
  The oldest national wildlife refuge in Texas, a ring of salt lakes in the sandhills south of Muleshoe where tens of thousands of sandhill cranes winter in a wet year.

More markers nearby

• Buffalo Soldier Tragedy of 1877 — 1.3 mi
• Pastores of Bailey County — 13 mi
• La Pista de Vida Agua — 13 mi
• Old Surratt Territory — 17 mi