The Founding of Bailey County

Cotton made the county the plaque describes. In 1920 little if any was grown in Bailey County, and the first crops went to Plainview for ginning until the county got its own gin in 1923. Ground water lay twenty to forty feet down, and big ranches such as the Watson and the Newsome were cut into farm tracts in 1924 and 1925. By 1929 cotton covered more than 24,000 acres and farms numbered 758. Cotton kept spreading through the Depression, reaching almost 45,000 acres and 820 farms by 1940.

What the plaque says

The Founding of Bailey County Bailey County was created Aug. 21, 1876, and named for Peter James Bailey, a Kentucky lawyer killed at the Alamo during the Texas War for Independence. This was thinly settled cattle country; Bailey was attached for judicial purposes to Baylor County in 1876-1891, and to Castro County, 1892-1918. In Nov. 1918, Bailey County was finally organized. Its first officials were W. M. Wilterding, judge; H. A. Douglass, sheriff and tax assessor-collector; C. C. Mardis, clerk; G. P. Kuykendall, treasurer; E. G. Hoskins, inspector of hides and animals; J. B. Diggs, T. L. Snyder, C. E. Dotson and John S. McMurtry, commissioners. At the first meeting of the commissioners court, in Blackwater Valley State Bank on Jan. 16, 1919, C. D. Gupton was appointed justice of the peace. Muleshoe was designated county seat in a special election, April 12, 1919. A jail cell was purchased in June 1919 from neighboring Parmer County. In July a building contract was let for first courthouse -- a frame structure soon erected at a cost of $2,450. Since institution of its government, this 832 sq. mi. county, with its good water resources, has developed an outstanding agricultural economy. Its progress is a tribute to the standards of its pioneer settlers. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge — 19 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.

More markers nearby

• Bailey County — steps away
• The Mule — 0.2 mi
• Old Hurley — 2.7 mi
• The XIT Ranch South Line — 3.0 mi