Royal Theater

Archer City was surveyed in 1876, named for Branch T. Archer of the Texas Revolution, and organized as a county seat only after the Kiowa and Comanche had been forced north to the reservations. Cotton was its first trade. Oil came in 1912, and by late 1926 there were 411 wells within thirteen miles of town. The Royal was the movie theater of that oil and cattle town on Main Street.

A fire gutted it in 1965 and left it a ruin. Larry McMurtry, a native of Archer County, set his 1966 novel The Last Picture Show in a town drawn from Archer City, and the closing of its Royal Theater is the book's great symbol of a way of life ending. When the film was made, the crew rebuilt the real Royal's front so it could stand in for itself. Behind the facade there was still nothing.

That is how it stayed until the 1990s, when Archer City residents formed a foundation to put shows back inside. The rebuilt Royal is now a performing arts center with a season of plays, holiday performances and a music night called the Texasville Opry. The marquee reads Now Playing again.