Site of Old Lubbock

W. D. Crump, whose faction started this town, had come a long way to it. Born in Louisville on August 21, 1844, he rode with John Hunt Morgan's cavalry, was captured near Buffington Island during Morgan's Raid in July 1863 and was held at Camp Morton, Camp Douglas and Point Lookout until his exchange in March 1865. He settled near present Oak Cliff in 1874 and moved to the South Plains in June 1890. Crump was elected county judge in 1898, helped found Shallowater through the Ripley Townsite Company and died on January 18, 1940.

What the plaque says

Site of Old Lubbock A predecessor of present Lubbock, this area was, in 1890, a subject of heated dispute by three factions (led by W.D. Crump, W.E. Rayner, and Frank Wheelock) that vied in the founding of the county seat. Unlike most county seat debaters in Texas, though, these men had no long-established towns to support. Their main interest was in organizing the county. In the course of the rivalry, the groups founded two settlements. The Crump faction, later joined by the Wheelock group and several financial backers, started "Old Lubbock" at this site. Called "North Town" because it was located north of Yellow House Canyon, the site took in section 7, block A, bounded by the present streets of Quirt, Ash, Erskine, and Kent. The site soon attained a population of about 50 and boasted a reported 37 buildings, including the most historic one in the county: the Nicolett Hotel. Rayner's rival settlement south of the canyon was named "Monterey" and was popularly called "South Town". Surprisingly, though, the factions did not reach the permanent hostility common to such disputes. On December 19, 1890, they united in a compromise unique in West Texas history; and as a result, the city of Lubbock was founded on the site where it now stands. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Silent Wings Museum — 1.8 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 — 3.2 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.
• American Windmill Museum — 3.6 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 — 3.7 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.

More markers nearby

• South Plains Army Air Field — 1.8 mi
• W. G. McMillan Construction Company — 1.8 mi
• Migrant Labor Camps of Lubbock County — 2.5 mi
• Yellowhouse Canyon — 2.7 mi