Old County Bookmobile, First "Inside Service" Bookmobile in Texas

The Library Bus ran in a system Texas librarians had campaigned for. The Texas Library Association was organized in Austin on June 9, 1902, sponsored by the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs and the University of Texas. It was instrumental in creating the Texas State Library and Historical Commission in 1909 and in passing the County Library Law in 1917, and it organized the People's Library Movement. Its library school goal was met at the University of Texas in 1948, and by 1993 its 5,000 members made it the nation's largest state library association.

What the plaque says

Old County Bookmobile, First "Inside Service" Bookmobile in Texas In use 1938-1957. Based at the county library on this site. A bright red, visible for miles, this first bookmobile in Texas was called "The Library Bus." It stopped at ranches, schools, oil camps; circulated 2,000 books a month; served in era of sparse settlement, World War II growth and later industrialization. There were private and rental libraries in early Texas; the Republic had a National Library, but most county libraries were founded or instigated by local citizens- -as was this pioneer bookmobile. Texas still has 51 bookmobiles in other counties. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carson County Square House Museum — steps away
  The 1880s ranch cottage that is the oldest house in the town of Panhandle, at the heart of a twenty-one-building museum of the plains from mammoth hunters to the oil boom.
• Gem Theatre — 16 mi
  Claude's small-town movie house of 1915, restored by the Armstrong County Museum and remembered for the scene in Hud where Homer and Lonnie Bannon sing along to Clementine.
• Hutchinson County Museum — 23 mi
  Borger's museum on the three-mile Main Street of a 1926 oil boom town that drew 45,000 people in ninety days and was put under martial law in 1929.
• Lake Meredith National Recreation Area — 24 mi
  A Canadian River reservoir in 200-foot breaks, built to water the Panhandle's cities, that fell to a record 26 feet deep in 2013 and still rises and falls with the drought.

More markers nearby

• Finch-Lord-Nelson and the Founding of Panhandle City — steps away
• Texas Panhandle Pioneers - The Simms Brothers — steps away
• Last Great Panhandle Cattle Drive to Montana — steps away
• Temple Lea Houston — steps away