Site of Conner Dugout

Organizing the county was a fight. The big ranching interests, led by T Anchor manager Lee John Hutson, opposed it as a way to slow the flow of homesteaders. Even so, 200 petitioners led by Lincoln G. Conner won an election, and in July 1889, at this dugout, Canyon City was chosen county seat with forty-five qualified voters taking part. The new county had 187 people in 1890. Conner's dugout had also served as the town's first general store, and A. L. Hammond's business and blacksmith shop was the second.

What the plaque says

Site of Conner Dugout First home in Canyon, a half-dugout, with windows at ground level. Built on survey located Christmas Day, 1887, by L. G. Conner. Location of Canyon's first post office; birthplace of Mamie Conner, first white child born in county. 1889 election to organize the county was held here. (1966)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — 0.7 mi
  The Panhandle's great collection, some two million objects behind a 1933 Art Deco hall carved with cattle brands, closed to the public since March 2025 over fire-safety violations.
• Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 11 mi
  A 1938 Depression-era lake on Tierra Blanca Creek that has gone dry, now 7,664 acres of shortgrass, cottonwood canyon and a prairie dog town on the High Plains south of Umbarger.
• Palo Duro Canyon State Park — 13 mi
  The upper end of the canyon the state bought in 1933, where CCC crews built the road to the floor and the army burned the winter camps of the Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne in 1874.
• TEXAS Outdoor Musical — 14 mi
  A summer pageant of Panhandle settler life staged since 1966 in the Pioneer Amphitheater, built into a basin of Palo Duro Canyon below a 600-foot cliff.

More markers nearby

• The Sad Monkey Railroad — 0.2 mi
• Neblett Hospital and Clinic — 0.2 mi
• Clyde & Grace Warwick — 0.3 mi
• The Canyon News — 0.3 mi