Lamar Building

Land buyers reached the inn by the Crosbyton-Southplains Railroad, chartered on April 6, 1910, with $150,000 in capital and its office in Crosbyton. Its first directors were Julian M. Bassett, Roger M. Bassett, two other Crosbyton men and three Coonleys of Illinois. Lubbock and Crosby County citizens gave more than $43,000 in bonuses and the right-of-way, and nearly thirty-nine miles of track opened on April 10, 1911. The Santa Fe bought the line in 1915. A later Crosbyton Railroad began in January 1990 but quit within the year.

What the plaque says

Lamar Building Site of Crosbyton Inn, first hotel here, built 1908, by C. B. Livestock Company to help promote area for cotton farming. A two-story frame building, it was mecca for travelers and land buyers. After fire in 1912, hotel rebuilt over original basement. It was razed in 1920s. A brick office and apartment building was erected by E. H. Hendricks in 1926; purchased 1944 by W. P. Lamar and renamed Lamar Building. Lamar (1889-1946), farmer, businessman, was son of pioneer of Crosby County. (1967)

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 Courthouses — steps away
• Crosby County — steps away
• High Plains Pioneer Henry Clay Smith — steps away
• Crosbyton — steps away