Umbarger

Umbarger grew through rival colonizers. Englishman Lee John Hutson, who bought the T Anchor holdings, speculated in land around the switch, while Father Joseph Reisdorff led a Catholic colonizing drive between 1902 and 1910. In 1908 both filed plans of settlement, and disputes over location and church debts split the town and produced two churches, though by 1920 business centered on Reisdorff's side of the tracks. Swiss immigrants came between 1911 and 1927. The public schools merged with Canyon's in 1964, and the parish hall hosts a sausage festival each November.

What the plaque says

Umbarger Umbarger In 1895, Civil War Veteran and farmer S.G. Umbarger established a wagon yard and sheds for travelers passing through this area. The area became known as Umbarger when the Pecos Valley Railroad, built in 1898, named a rail switch after him. By 1902, the community had a post office; in 1904, later citizens established a public school district. German-Catholic families, brought to the area by Pius Friemel, established St. Mary's Church, or Marienkirche, in 1908. During World War II, Italian prisoners of war were held in nearby Hereford. A group of them, trained in old world techniques, carved religious figures and painted the interior of the parish church, which remains a community center. (1968, 2003)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 2.4 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.
• Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — 11 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.
• Cadillac Ranch — 17 mi
  Ten Cadillacs from 1949 to 1963 planted nose down in a pasture west of Amarillo by the Ant Farm collective in 1974, on private land where visitors are let in to paint them.
• Deaf Smith County Historical Museum — 19 mi
  Hereford's county museum in an early Catholic school: the Windmill City's pioneers, a half-dugout and caboose outside, and work by the Italian prisoners held south of town in the war.

More markers nearby

• Randall County — 2.9 mi
• Town of Dawn — 6.1 mi
• Homesite of W. F. Heller, Pioneer Farmer — 9.6 mi
• Smith Building (Palace Hotel) — 10 mi