Site of Chicago

Chicago grew in a county that filled almost overnight. Dawson County had thirty-seven people in 1900 and 2,320 in 1910, and its ranches and farms went from four to 330. Between 1902 and 1905, as the grazing leases expired, settlers filed on the land; when choice tracts were released, would-be owners waited in line at Big Spring for as long as six weeks. The county's first school met in one room of the Mullins ranch house in 1902, and its first church was organized by Baptists at Chicago in 1904.

What the plaque says

Site of Chicago (1/4 mi. N) W.C. Bishop of Chicago, Ill., and wealthy lumberman George N. Fletcher established the OTO (later Bar TO) ranch about 1887 on Fletcher's extensive landholdings in Dawson County. A post office was opened at the ranch headquarters on May 15, 1889, and named Chicago, both in honor of Bishop's home town and in humorous reference to the sparse population of the area. The postal facility served other large ranches in this vicinity, such as C. C. Slaughter's Long S. In the 1890s, Fletcher left the ranching venture, and A. F. Crowley and W. H. Godair became Bishop's partners. By that time, a village had begun to grow up around the post office. B. A. Oden served as OTO ranch foreman and postmaster of Chicago from 1894 to 1903. When Walter Stemmons replaced him in both positions in 1904, the settlement was renamed Stemmons. The same year, a post office was established in the new town of Lamesa, two miles south of Chicago. Dawson County was organized in 1905, and both towns entered the contest for county seat. When Lamesa won, residents of Chicago quickly relocated their homes and businesses there. The school and Baptist and Methodist churches also moved to Lamesa, within days, the community of Chicago had disappeared. (1977)

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Pioneer Cemetery — 1.5 mi
• Lamesa Farm Workers Community — 3.3 mi
• O'Donnell — 16 mi
• New Moore — 19 mi