Dickens County

The Wanderers Who Make Bad Camps band of the Comanches (Numunuu) dominated this country before settlement and hunted buffalo for most of their needs. Settlers long shunned it for its remoteness and slight rainfall, and great ranches took up the land instead: the Spur began in 1878 with 1,900 cattle that Jim Hull drove from Refugio County. In 1880 the county held only three homes, a schoolhouse and twenty-eight people, most of them apparently ranch hands. The Spur's manager, S. W. Lomax, ran an agricultural experiment on company land in 1884, and by 1890 the census counted 295 residents.

What the plaque says

Formed from Young and Bexar territories. Created August 21, 1876. Organized April 15, 1903. Dickens City, County Seat.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spur-Dickens County Museum — 10 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.
• 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

• Dickens Springs — 0.6 mi
• Dickens Cemetery — 0.9 mi
• Espuela — 4.7 mi
• Texas Agricultural Experiment Station at Spur — 10 mi