Old Mobeetie Jail Museum

Mobeetie began as Hidetown, a buffalo hunters' camp on Sweetwater Creek where Charles Rath and Bob Wright opened a supply store in 1874 and people built shelters out of hides. When the army set up Fort Elliott nearby the next year, the camp became the post's trading town, and in 1878 it moved closer to the fort. It was called Sweetwater until 1879, when the post office needed another name and took Mobeetie, possibly a Native word for sweet water.

That year Wheeler County became the first in the Panhandle to organize, and Mobeetie its seat. For a time the county administered the rest of the Panhandle as well. In 1881 the town became the judicial center of a fifteen-county district, with Temple Houston, son of Sam Houston, as district attorney, and Texas Ranger captain George W. Arrington was elected sheriff in 1882. The Panhandle's first newspaper was printed here. In 1893 a revival closed the saloons.

Then the town lost its reasons to exist. The fort closed in 1890, the railroads went elsewhere, a tornado on May 1, 1898 killed seven people, and in 1907 the county seat went to Wheeler. In 1929 the Santa Fe built two miles away and the town moved to the tracks as New Mobeetie. The 1886 jail, built of local stone, is the old town's museum of Wheeler County history, and Fort Elliott's flagpole stands nearby.