County Line Community

In the 1980s County Line still had two gins, the County Line Co-Op and the Teakell Independent, and Ike Bennett of the County Line Gin was the state's 1985 Ginner of the Year. The Baptist church, founded about 1910, drew about thirty-five people a week, and a store ran until March 1986. The Texas Almanac listed thirty residents, though locals counted ten to fifteen, with migrant workers raising the total near fifty at ginning time. Amoco, which held most of the oil rights in the Anton-Irish Clear Fork field, kept an office nearby. By 2000 the population was fifteen.

What the plaque says

County Line Community In 1901, W.G. Murray, John H. Pettit and the J.G. Hardy family purchased land in this area. These early farming families started a local school, built with lumber hauled from the nearest railhead at Canyon City. In 1903, Hale and Lubbock county commissioners officially established the school district. Murray donated a five-acre tract to Lubbock County in May 1906 for a school, church and cemetery. The multi-room schoolhouse was also a place of worship for Baptist, Methodist and Church of Christ congregations and further served as a community center. Although the community would ultimately be named for its proximity to the Lubbock and Hale county boundary, both it and the school were known by several names throughout the early 20th century, including Murray, Pettit and Harral, all prominent neighbors. The Murrays founded a cattle and sheep enterprise, J.H. Pettit established a ranch, and L.A. Harral was a charter member of the Baptist church and a school board member. Joe Ed Hart built the first cotton gin in the area in the 1920s. The County Line Community Club, organized in 1924, was the first of several social groups. Orville Vaughn built the first store, and by 1940, several grocery stores, blacksmith shops and garages opened in County Line. After the discovery of the nearby Anton-Irish Clearfork Field in 1945, oil became an important part of the economy. A 1936 court case regarding boundaries and elections was ruled in the school's favor, but in 1940 County Line School consolidated with Abernathy. Even after the school closed, the community continued to function for another fifty years until modernization resulted in a dwindling local population. Social clubs and a few businesses including two cotton gins continued through the early 1990s. Now only the church and cemetery remain as physical evidence of a once vibrant community. (2019)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lubbock Lake Landmark — 16 mi
  A bend of Yellow House Draw on Lubbock's north edge where digging has found nearly 12,000 years of people on the Southern High Plains, layer on layer, from Clovis to the 1880s.
• Silent Wings Museum — 16 mi
  The museum of the American combat glider pilots of World War II, in Lubbock's old airport terminal on the field where most of them earned their wings.
• National Ranching Heritage Center — 18 mi
  A Texas Tech outdoor museum where ranch houses, barns, windmills and a depot from across the ranching country were moved one by one onto a single park beside the campus.
• Buddy Holly Center — 20 mi
  The city's museum of Buddy Holly and West Texas music in a 1928 railway depot, with the house where the Crickets worked on That'll Be the Day moved next door.

More markers nearby

• Cora Vance and Vance Hatchery — 9.6 mi
• Town of Abernathy — 11 mi
• Struve Family Businesses — 11 mi
• New Deal — 13 mi