Site of Virginia City

Virginia City was one of several Bailey County land promotions of 1906 to 1912, when the Coldren and Vaughn land companies brought Midwestern farmers by excursion train to Farwell and drove them south to see land priced at ten to twenty dollars an acre. Matthew C. Vaughn and Samuel D. McCloud platted the town on March 13, 1909, with lots set aside for schools, churches and a park, and an Iowa land company bought the site that same year. A hotel housed the visitors. The town was abandoned by 1913.

What the plaque says

Site of Virginia City Part of a land promotion scheme begun 1908. Advertised as future metropolis by shrewd dealers, who implied that good rains and bumper crops were typical of region. Naive buyers were treated to tours through town, where they saw shops, a lot reserved for the courthouse, and a roadbed for the railroad. Town was named for wife of an early county landowner. Although a local cowboy had remarked that Virginia City's biggest crop was "suckers", many people bought land, only to face a ruinous drouth, 1909-1912. Most soon moved, leaving site vacant. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge — 7.4 mi
  The oldest national wildlife refuge in Texas, a ring of salt lakes in the sandhills south of Muleshoe where tens of thousands of sandhill cranes winter in a wet year.
• Blackwater Draw — 32 mi
  The site between Clovis and Portales that gave the Clovis culture its name, found by a nineteen-year-old in 1929 and dug for decades inside a working gravel pit.

More markers nearby

• La Pista de Vida Agua — 9.6 mi
• Pastores of Bailey County — 9.6 mi
• The XIT Ranch South Line — 17 mi
• Buffalo Soldier Hill — 18 mi