XIT Museum

The XIT was the ranch that paid for the Texas capitol. In 1879 the legislature set aside three million acres in the Panhandle for the purpose, and after the old capitol burned in 1881 a Chicago syndicate took the land as payment for building the new one. The syndicate fenced and stocked it as the XIT until it could be sold to farmers; the selling began in the late 1890s, and the last XIT cattle were sold in 1912. Dalhart grew up on former XIT land where the Rock Island crossed the Fort Worth and Denver City in 1901; its name joins Dallam and Hartley, the counties it straddles.

The idea for a museum came from J. Frank Dobie. Visiting the XIT Reunion in 1941, he saw the yearly exhibit of objects lent by old cowhands and said it ought to be permanent. After a short-lived city museum, the Dallam-Hartley Counties Historical Association, organized in 1974 by the high school librarian Marie Reynolds, moved into the old Chrysler building, built as a car dealership in 1929, and opened the XIT Museum on August 7, 1975, during the reunion. It had once housed a USO for Black soldiers.

The museum has since grown, with XIT branding irons, saddles, photographs, rooms including a pioneer kitchen and chapel, and exhibits on the railroads and the two counties' sheriffs. The XIT Reunion, with its parade and rodeo, has filled Dalhart every August since 1937, and the Empty Saddle Monument, unveiled in 1940 for the ranch's departed riders, stands at the US-87 underpass.