Ransom Canyon

The village sits on the North Fork of the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos, near Buffalo Springs Lake twelve miles east of Lubbock. Chapman and Chapman of Lubbock promoted it as a development in the mid-1960s on a 576-acre site that took in the headquarters of the Johnston Ranch, which once controlled about 165 sections around it. Residents voted in April 1984 to change the name from Lake Ransom Canyon to Ransom Canyon. The town counted 561 people in 1980, 750 in 1990, 1,011 in 2000 and 1,189 in 2020.

What the plaque says

Ransom Canyon Spanish explorers crossed this canyon, part of the larger Yellow House Canyon, perhaps as early as the 1540s. Jumano, Apache, and Comanche Indians camped here to take advantage of the canyon's protective walls, fresh water springs, trees, and abundant game. In the late 1700s New Mexican traders known as Comancheros began to exchange agricultural and craft products of their villages for buffalo hides, horses, and other items of the Plains Indians along a trade route which passed through this canyon. In the 1800s a number of captives were brought here by Comanche Indians and sold to Comancheros. The Comanchero practice of demanding ransom for their release gave rise to the canyon's name. By the 1870s mostly buffalo hunters and ranchers occupied the area. In 1884 the Western Land and Livestock Company bought most of the land in the canyon area and operated the famous IOA Ranch. The IOA Ranch venture failed and in 1901 the canyon became the site of the O6 Ranch. From 1915 until 1961 Ransom Canyon was part of a large ranch owned by the Johnston Family. In 1961 investors purchased the canyon area and in 1965 platted Lake Ransom Canyon Village. The village was incorporated in 1978. 1994

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Slaton Harvey House — 6.6 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.
• American Windmill Museum — 8.9 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.
• Buddy Holly Center — 9.8 mi
  The city's museum of Buddy Holly and West Texas music in a 1928 railway depot, with the house where the Crickets worked on That'll Be the Day moved next door.
• Silent Wings Museum — 12 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.

More markers nearby

• Slaton Bakery — 6.8 mi
• Slaton — 6.8 mi
• Mercy Hospital — 6.9 mi
• Slaton Volunteer Fire Department — 6.9 mi