CV Ranch and Cee Vee Community

William Newson, the first postmaster, asked for the name CV, but postal officials forbade initials and accepted Cee Vee instead; the office opened in 1928. The Handbook of Texas says the community's school began that year in the old Mill Iron Ranch headquarters and moved to a new building in 1930, and a gin was built around 1929. Three congregations had organized by then. By 1940 Cee Vee had fifty people and two stores, and the school ran through the late 1950s. The community counted seventy-one people in 1980 and 1990 and forty-five in 2000.

What the plaque says

The CV cattle brand was first registered in 1850 in McLennan County by Claiborne Varner. In 1856 his brother in law, J. Wes Sheek, and Sheek's stepbrother Charles Goodnight took the CV herd westward. Sheek bought Goodnight's portion of the herd in 1869, and later moved the cattle to Cottle County. The CV Ranch was established in the northwest corner of Cottle County in the 1880s and originally contained 47,000 acres. The ranch became a large operation under various owners. By 1889 the CV Ranch was purchased by Mill Iron ranch owner Col. W. E. Hughes. The ranch house was located 65 yards west. Following Hughes' death in 1918, his granddaughter Annie C. S. Hughes divided 37,000 acres of the ranch into smaller farms and sold them in 1927-28. The community of Cee Vee developed here and contained four stores, a blacksmith, barber shop, cafes, four churches, and a cotton gin. Cee Vee Mercantile store was located on this site. A post office was granted July 4, 1928. A school was built in 1929. By 1935 about 100 families had settled in Cee Vee. However, drought, the depression, and World War II caused many people to leave the area. By the 1990s about 20 families remained. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Matador Wildlife Management Area — 6.1 mi
  Twenty-eight thousand acres of mesquite, shinnery oak and juniper hills in the Rolling Plains north of Paducah, bought by the state in 1959 for wildlife research and open to permit holders.
• Childress County Heritage Museum — 19 mi
  A railroad division town's museum in its 1935 Spanish Colonial post office, in the town that won its county seat by renaming a rival and once employed Walter P. Chrysler.
• Motley County Historical Museum — 26 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.
• Bob Wills Museum — 28 mi
  The old Turkey school, now holding Bob Wills's boots, hats, his father's fiddle and his barbershop tools, in the cotton town that fills each April for Bob Wills Day.

More markers nearby

• The Gray and The Blue — 17 mi
• Cottle County — 17 mi
• Childress Army Air Field — 17 mi
• Tee Pee City — 19 mi