New Deal

Monroe grew slowly at first: the Handbook reports only one house in 1918, the year after the school was built. A permanent depot went up in 1928 and opened in 1929. In 1940 it had 125 people, a gin, a grain house and a branch library, and when the post office came in June 1949 the town took the school district's name. New Deal incorporated in 1970 with about 500 residents. By 1980 it had 637 people, gins, onion-packing sheds and a regional headquarters of the Northrup King Seed Company; it counted 708 in 2000 and 730 in 2020.

What the plaque says

New Deal The Pecos and Northern Texas Railway, part of the Santa Fe system, extended from Plainview to Lubbock in 1909 and established new settlements along the line. Invited to name two of the towns north of Lubbock, Mollie Abernathy suggested "Monroe" and "Abernathy" for her husband, a land agent and official liaison to the Santa Fe Railroad. The Monroe townsite developers held an auction for lots on December 22, 1909, and a store was built soon after. The town grew to the west and south of the original townsite and by the late 1920s had a general store, a blacksmith shop, cotton gins, a café, and a lumberyard. On May 28, 1917, the town's school became Monroe Common School District #10 of the Lubbock county schools. Later that year, voters approved plans to construct a 2-story brick school building, which burned in 1938. In 1935, Monroe consolidated with Caldwell, Grovesville and Center Schools to form New Deal Rural High School District #3, named after the federal programs of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. By 1939, all of the schools were consolidated at New Deal. On June 1, 1949, Monroe was renamed New Deal with the establishment of a post office. The city of New Deal incorporated in 1970. The community benefited from its strategic location on the main transportation corridor between Lubbock and Plainview and leading to points beyond. In addition to the railroad, an automobile route was progressively designated as first the Puget Sound to Gulf Highway, then State Highway 9, then US Highway 87. Despite changes over the years, the city continues to thrive as a result of citizens' service and pride in their community. (2018)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Silent Wings Museum — 5.0 mi
  The museum of the American combat glider pilots of World War II, in Lubbock's old airport terminal on the field where most of them earned their wings.
• Lubbock Lake Landmark — 8.0 mi
  A bend of Yellow House Draw on Lubbock's north edge where digging has found nearly 12,000 years of people on the Southern High Plains, layer on layer, from Clovis to the 1880s.
• National Ranching Heritage Center — 9.9 mi
  A Texas Tech outdoor museum where ranch houses, barns, windmills and a depot from across the ranching country were moved one by one onto a single park beside the campus.
• American Windmill Museum — 10 mi
  Lubbock's park of restored water-pumping windmills and early wind chargers, more than 70 of them turning outdoors and the rare ones under roof, with a megawatt-era turbine overhead.

More markers nearby

• W. G. McMillan Construction Company — 5.0 mi
• South Plains Army Air Field — 5.0 mi
• Site of Old Lubbock — 6.7 mi
• Town of Abernathy — 7.1 mi