Lazbuddie

On the Star Ranch, the Handbook of Texas says, directions and locations were given by the names of its windmills. Until rural electrification arrived, the Lazbuddie store held the town's only telephone, and in the 1980s the post office still occupied the original store building. Tent shows and medicine wagons came through during the Depression. The town counted seventy-five people in 1947 and 248 from 1980 through 2000. In 1979-80 a dam on Running Water Draw, six miles northeast of town, made the Lazbuddie reservoir for recreation and irrigation.

What the plaque says

Lazbuddie In 1902, Thomas Kelly bought 55,136 acres of the capitol syndicate's Red Tower Camp (part of the original XIT Ranch). Kelly developed the Star Ranch with thirty windmills plus bunkhouses, corrals, outbuildings and a schoolhouse. The ranch was later subdivided to form smaller ranches and farms, and the Star Ranch School building moved here. In 1924, D. Luther (Laz) Green and Andrew (Buddie) Sherley opened the Lazbuddie commissary, which became the center of a rural community. In 1926-27, Lazbuddie gained a post office, Missionary Baptist Church, and new brick schoolhouse. A Methodist Church and community cemetery began in 1928, followed by businesses, gins and a grain elevator. Lazbuddie remains an active agricultural town on the Texas high plains. (2010)

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Old Hurley — 11 mi
• Bailey County Cemetery — 11 mi
• Harden A. Douglass — 11 mi
• The J. W. Carter Family and the 7-Up Ranch — 11 mi