Commercial Hotel

The hotel opened in a town that had only just become a rail point and had just burned. The Pecos and Northern Texas, a Santa Fe division, built through Floydada in 1910, and after a devastating fire in 1911 the town was rebuilt and boomed for several years. Not all was easy: the 1918 flu killed more than fifty people in Floydada. When the Quanah, Acme and Pacific arrived in 1928, the town became an important rail junction, and by 1950 it had ninety-two businesses and 3,214 people.

What the plaque says

Commercial Hotel Alabama native William P. Daily (1865-1941) and his family arrived in Floyd County in 1911, settling briefly in the Muncy community (5 mi. N). After moving to Floydada to open a feed, coal, and wagon yard, Daily recognized the need for a hotel here. Construction began in 1912, and the hotel opened in January 1913, with 21 guest rooms. Catering mostly to traveling salesmen, Daily transported them from the railroad station in a horse-drawn buggy, and allowed them to display their wares in the hotel lobby. The hotel was renamed The Lamplighter Inn in 1964. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum — 23 mi
  Crosbyton's museum of Blanco Canyon, built in 1958 as a copy of Hank Smith's Rock House, and the place to learn the canyon's 1871 fight between Mackenzie's cavalry and Quanah's Quahadi Comanche.

More markers nearby

• First National Bank of Floydada — steps away
• Dolphin Ward Floyd — steps away
• Organization of Floyd County — steps away
• Floydada Chapter No. 31, Order of the Eastern Star — steps away