Crosbyton

The town kept growing through hard times. Crosby County lost nearly 9 percent of its people in the 1930s, yet Crosbyton rose from 1,250 to 1,615 residents and gained some twenty businesses. Its first hospital opened in August 1947, and a municipal airport was dedicated in 1975. In 1976 federal energy agencies funded a Texas Tech solar project here, and a sixty-five-foot mirrored dish built two and a half miles south of town was then the largest single solar collector in the world, meant to feed the city power plant.

What the plaque says

Crosbyton Founded 1908 on "cutting grounds" of C.B. Livestock Company which built a school, supply store, railroad and inn to encourage settlers. By 1911, had 1,000 citizens; was county seat. Today is center of rich irrigated farm land. Home of Pioneer Museum. Gateway to White River Dam. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum — steps away
  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.
• Spur-Dickens County Museum — 25 mi
  Dickens County's museum on the main block of Spur, a town born on November 1, 1909, when the first train reached the land a New York syndicate was selling off from the Spur Ranch.
• Slaton Harvey House — 27 mi
  A 1912 Santa Fe Harvey House in the railroad town of Slaton, restored as a museum, event hall and five-room inn overlooking a working BNSF yard.
• Motley County Historical Museum — 34 mi
  Matador's museum in the 1928 Traweek Hospital, in the county seat a Scottish-owned ranch created by having its cowboys open one-day businesses to pass a state rule.

More markers nearby

• Crosby County — steps away
• High Plains Pioneer Henry Clay Smith — steps away
• Crosby County — steps away
• Citizens National Bank — steps away