Henry Bradley Sanborn

Sanborn's town building was bound up with a family loss. He built the Amarillo Hotel for $50,000 and the town's first waterworks, which he sold in 1902. His only child, Ellwood, died in December 1890 at twenty-one, and Sanborn gave the city nine acres as Ellwood Park; he and his wife also gave twenty acres for St. Anthony's Hospital. He owned the 120,000-acre Bravo Ranch south of Dalhart, and he died at a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1912 and was buried in Kansas City. In 1921 the house on this site was moved to 1311 Madison Street.

What the plaque says

Henry Bradley Sanborn (1845-1912) Principal early-day developer of Amarillo. Born in New York state; employed 1875 by barbed wire inventor J.F. Glidden as his Texas sales agent. With Glidden he established the famous 250,000-acre Frying Pan Ranch in 1881 to prove the economic advantages of barbed wire fencing. Building of the Fort Worth & Denver City Railway through the region led voters to organize Potter County. In the election on Aug. 30, 1877, Sanborn offered a site for the county seat. A rival section was chosen. Undaunted, Sanborn began developing the Glidden & Sanborn Addition one mile east of the new town site. In 1889 heavy rains and other inducements led residents to move to Glidden & Sanborn Addition. In 1892 Sanborn traded his interest in The Frying Pan for Glidden's interest in the city. In 1898 he secured a rail connection to the South Plains which assured the future of Amarillo. On this site Sanborn and his wife (Glidden's niece, Ellen Wheeler) had their home, an office building, a carriage house, stables for their six matched coach horses, and a deer park. Henry Bradley Sanborn, "Father of Amarillo," died on May 19, 1912. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Route 66 Sixth Street Historic District — 2.1 mi
  Thirteen blocks of Amarillo's streetcar suburb that Route 66 turned into a roadside strip, from the 1922 Nat to Texaco, Phillips and Dutch Mill stations, now shops and bars.
• Helium Centennial Time Columns Monument — 4.7 mi
  Four sealed time capsules raised in Amarillo in 1968 for helium's centennial, in the city that for years produced almost all the world's commercial helium from the Cliffside field.
• Cadillac Ranch — 8.9 mi
  Ten Cadillacs from 1949 to 1963 planted nose down in a pasture west of Amarillo by the Ant Farm collective in 1974, on private land where visitors are let in to paint them.
• Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — 16 mi
  The Panhandle's great collection, some two million objects behind a 1933 Art Deco hall carved with cattle brands, closed to the public since March 2025 over fire-safety violations.

More markers nearby

• Amarillo — steps away
• Henry B. Sanborn — steps away
• Potter County — steps away
• Potter County, Establishing of — 0.2 mi