We recommend the Facebook Group "West Texas History & Memories" for history, famous people, old photos, stories, unclaimed estates and genealogy of the Western Half of Texas . . . Check it out and join the conversation

What's Your Favorite Book about a Crosby County Person, Place or by a Crosby County Author? Here are some of our best reads by Crosby County authors and about people and places in Crosbyton, Ralls, Lorenzo, Cone, Kalgary, Emma and Estacado Texas. Did we miss some good ones? What's your favorite?

This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links. For Example: As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

Here are a round dozen tales about the "unexplained" side of Texas. The stories inform, arouse and even move the reader, allowing a view of the state from a different perspective at each turn. As varied as the stories may be, they all share the theme of mystery. Found inside: "An old squatter's ghost used to drive his phantom steers into herds that cowboys were holding for the night on a high bluff at the eastern edge of the Caprock in Crosby County. The place . . . Read more

 In 1887 DeLoach moved by wagon with his parents from Georgia to Parker County, Texas. Eleven years later, at the age of eighteen, DeLoach made his way to the West Texas Plains and began working as a cowhand on the Two-Buckle Ranch in Crosby County , and in 1913 he moved his family in a covered wagon to Emma, also in Crosby County.  On March 28, 1914, at the age of thirty-four, DeLoach made the first entry in his diary. After three years he moved on to other opportunities before settling on a farm near Sudan in Lamb County in 1925.

"Born in Tennessee on February 4, 1835, John N. Jones ran away from home at sixteen and came to Texas lacking "ten cents having a dime in money. " Except for fighting in Arkansas for both sides during the Civil War, he spent the rest of his long life in Texas. He died at Cone, Texas in Crosby County, on January 31 , 1922..." Read more Look inside

Found Inside: "At Eighty-Three Years old, Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receiver Don Maynard still chuckles at the difference between the tiny Texas towns he lived in compared to his first trip to New York City... Donald Rogers Maynard was born on January 25, 1935, in the small town of Crosbyton, Texas... When it was time to go to high school, the Maynard's lived in a rural area about 50 miles west of Lubbock. Maynard attended the Three Way Independent School District in Maple Texas in Bailey County. The Three Way School was a six-man high school team when Maynard began playing varsity football. For his junior season in 1951, Maynard and his family moved to Colorado City which was a little bit bigger than Don was used to . . . " Read more Look inside  . . . for more like this please see Texas Football Heroes - County by County

THE SECRETS OF THE STAMFORD INN
"...The other victims were the Winters Family from Ralls, Texas, where the father was the Chamber of Commerce Secretary. In the Texas Spur's December 26, 1924 issue, it says that the the two children of Mr. and Mrs. W.B. Winters, Warren Jr., 3 1/2. and Bonnie Ruth, 1, died in the fire. Original research showed Mr. Winters, however, survived the fire, but died within a week at the Stamford Sanitarium of burns he had received in the fire. But his name appears in the 1930 census and shows that he remarried and had another daughter named Rose..." Read more Look inside  . . . for more like this please see Mysterious Texas

Paris Cox, a young Quaker from Indiana came and surveyed the Plains for a suitable place to establish a Quaker colony. It was first named Marietta and was renamed Estacado when the post office was established October 13, 1881. It became county seat of Crosby County and 10 surrounding counties were attached to the county for judicial purposes when the seat of government was set up in 1886. The town's population grew to about 600. There was a Junior College, residents were Quakers and non-Quakers, merchants, farmers, lawyers, politicians and small ranchers. It was the center of life and civilization and was recognized as the cradle of culture on the Texas Plains.

by John R Erickson

Erickson tells the story of his family history in the context of a specific place. This place, instrumental in shaping their lives, is the flatland prairie of northwestern Texas . . .   One branch of Erickson's family, sturdy Quaker farmers from Ohio, helped establish the first Anglo settlement on the Llano Estacado in 1881, in Crosby County . . . Read more Look inside

by Bill McIver

"Our last cotton-picking jobs were near Ralls in Crosby County, Texas"

By Dead Reckoning began as a family history for Bill McIver's children and grandchildren. But the story morphed from genealogy to a fascinating historical autobiography as the author researched the westward migration of his 18th century immigrant Scot for-bearers and wrote about the profound events of his early life that included the Great Depression, World War II, Korean War and First Vietnam War. A quintessential story of impoverished Depression-era Americans who fought to rise from poverty and attain the blessings of the American Dream . . . Read more Look inside

by Joe Taylor from Crosbyton Texas

Full color format with over 300 photographs, most never seen before. Referenced and indexed. Never before published information about fossils. Accounts of Fossil digs in Wyoming, Colorado, Texas, Utah, Ohio, and from all over the world. Taylor has more time excavating, molding and studying fossils than most paleontologists with degrees. The information in this book strikes a damaging blow against the theory of evolution . . . read more . . . for more like this please see Mysterious Texas

Llano Sunrise is a historic action novel and is the first book written by J. Robert Dennard who grew up in Ralls, Texas, located in the heart of the Llano. "Lost in the vast Texas plains of 1867, Tal Ralls pays a heavy price for taking the shortest route to New Mexico to see his dying mother– across the untamed Llano Estacado. Alone, he's attacked by Comanches, incurring wounds that leave him sick and weak. A Mexican Comanchero doctors his wounds, but steals his belongings and leaves him to the mercy of hungry wolves and a raging blizzard. Rescued by a jovial German trader... Read more Look inside

by Jaston Williams

Jaston is the son of a West Texas farmer and a school teacher. His family moved to Olton, Texas, and then to Crosbyton, where he graduated from Crosbyton High School. Greater Tuna is a hilarious send-up of small town morals and mores among the upstanding citizens of Tuna, Texas' Greater Tuna is the first in a series of four comedic plays (followed by A Tuna Christmas, Red, White and Tuna, and Tuna Does Vegas), each set in the town of Tuna, Texas, the "third-smallest" town in the state. . Read more

"In the fall of 1889, cowboys who were driving a herd up the Blanco River in Crosby County decided to let the cattle spend the night at the top of a mesa. Sometime after midnight, two of the cowboys on night watch caught a man who was cutting out several steers from the herd. He explained to them that the cattle were some of his that had drifted in with the larger herd. Rough justice was the rule rather than the exception in the late 1800s, so the cowboys decided to mete out the usual punishment reserved for horse and cattle thieves: hanging. They tied the man to his horse and led him to a tree..." Read more Look inside

See Also: Mysterious Texas

"In Crosby County, in the Texas Panhandle, there stands a lone mesa---two hundred acres with fine grazing grasses. But no cattle boss will ever bring his herd to the site, for a ghost rider haunts that mesa. Many are the terrified cattle that have fallen to their death at the base of Stampede Mesa. Early in the fall of 1899, a cattleman by the name of William Sawyer came through with his heard of fifteen hundred head of cattle. One evening..." Read more Look inside

See Also: Mysterious Texas

by Bill Laird

"Another congregation from Ralls, Texas also agreed to help support us. Having coached football and track at both Ralls and Wolfforth, and worshipping with those congregations during our time there, helped in influencing those brethren ..." Read more

"He married a woman who said if he didn't come back home to Ralls, Texas, she was gonna divorce him,” Pearson said. “So he put up his horn and became a farmer the rest of his life.” (Anyone who's been through Ralls, halfway between Idalou and McAdoo, east of Lubbock, can appreciate that this was indeed true love).  "But he always had a little band [on the side]." Pearson continued, " and anytime anybody came through, he was the go-to guy for backing people up ..."  Read more Look inside

By 1915, Sam W. Cates was nineteen years old and living in the tiny town of Crosbyton, Texas, populated by about eight hundred souls. He was rather small, five feet, eight inches tall and 135 pounds, with brown eyes. Gold crowns covered his two front teeth. Sam worked for J. W. Burton as a clerk in his law office and as a chauffer for  Burton's wife Metta. Sam also boarded at the Burton's home in Crosbyton . On Monday, March 8, 1920, Sam drove to Lubbock to pick up Metta, who had been hospitalized for a mental and nervous condition. When they returned home about 10:00 p.m., J.W. was waiting ... Read more Look inside

"After two years of wandering around from parish to parish, he was called by the Holy Spirit Episcopal Church in Estacado, Texas. Because Ded had been a supply priest, he was used to traveling by horse, so he rode into Estacado, arriving the day before he was expected. Part of the "package" offered by the church was the rectory, a two-story, three-bedroom house that was next to the church...Read more Look inside . . . for more like this please see Texas Church History

After its initial hardships, the town of Estacado prospered for a decade, but in 1891 a rapid decline began. In that year  the citizens of Crosby County voted to remove the seat of government from Estacado and place it in Emma, a newer town closer to the center of the county. After this occurred most of the Quaker farmers abandoned the town, many of them going back to the eastern states. They had already lost the leadership of Paris Cox; he had died in 1888 at a comparatively early age. By 1893 ... Read more Look inside

Kalgary Texas: Stampede Mesa... According to the story, in the fall of 1889 the area was a frequent stop for trail herds. The area was good for the tall grass, the water and a high place to pot trouble for some distance away. For one trail boss trouble came in an unexpected fashion. The men had accidentally driven their herd through the property of a farmer and had driven his cows up the Mesa with their own. The farmer arrived on a scrawny white mare and demanded his cows back..." Read more

"I'm not a princess in need of a castle. I'm just a simple girl from Lorenzo, Texas.” “Let me do this, Sam,” James begs. “Let me do this for you. I put you through so much this past year; let me make it up to you.” “But you don't know anything about ranching ... Read more Look inside

Batman conquers crime with brains, brawn, and a whole lot of high-tech gadgetry. Batman Science explores the surprising ways the Caped Crusader’s gear and gadgets actually connect to reality. "In 2012 Dustin Martin set the hang glider world record for distance by traveling 474 miles from Zapata to Lorenzo, Texas. The flight took just more than 11 hours... Read more Look inside

Born into a family of ten boys and five girls, of which I am the seventh son. while growing up in Lorenzo, Texas, on the farm, my life began to take on a direction in which I did not believe would come to finding a "Pearl of Great Price" . My growing up was a disaster to me because I could not be like normal children able to play outside, because of my hay-fever problems. So at three years old, I began ..."  Read more Look inside

When Maria was seventeen and Pablo was nineteen, they met in Lorenzo, Texas, where their families had trekked as part of their yearly pilgrimages to pick cotton. It was love at first sight. A few months after picking season..." the highly-anticipated personal history from Alberto R. Gonzales, former Attorney General of the United States and former Counsel to the President—the only lawyer and only Hispanic to hold both these positions—an ultimate insider in the most tumultuous events in recent history Read more Look inside

Before movie screens filled the country and television screens filled our homes, entertainment had to travel to the people. The traveling tent show was a popular form of melodrama and variety entertainment through much of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century... "Hogan told the story of how, when Art was playing in the town of Lorenzo, Texas, a man came to Art and asked for work. Art told him he could not pay anything but..." Read more Look inside

by Jerry McKee Bullock

"I was born in Ralls, Texas, while my dad was president of the Chamber of Commerce. Later we lived in Quanah where he had the same position. There was a short stay in Abilene and then back to Lubbock when he became a civil servant with the National Youth Administration. I was an only child and spent more time with professional adults than in playtime with children..." Read more Look inside

by Gregory Sparks

"After about half a year passed, my wife began to want to go back to Texas and live there. I just wanted to be with my daughter, so I left Colorado Springs with my family and took off to Ralls, Texas, where my wife's mother lived. We stayed there longer than I wanted, but having to get along with her family and not be bored, her mom got me a job at this Cotton Compress Co..."  Read more Look inside

by Max Lucado

I can remember, as a seven-year-old, going to my grandparents house for a week. Mom and Dad bourght a ticket, gave me some spending money, put me on a Greyhound bus, an dtold me not to talk to strangers or get off the bus until I saw my grandma out the window. They made it very clear to me that my  destination was Ralls, Texas ... Read more Look inside

If I continue to grow stronger I'll go out to Ralls, Texas, and keep books in my brother-in-law's grocery store. This will be kind of a lay job. I'll have to do something when you go away, to occupy my time in-between your letters ... Read more Look inside

Ellis took a bus back to Ralls, Texas. He said, “I got in with a construction crew building houses for a while. I then went to work for the post office in Ralls and retired in 1986.” He and Dorothy had two sons, Rodney and Val ... Read More Look inside

"They had mules to pull the plows, a cow to give milk, pigs for meat and hens for eggs. She made her own blankets for warmth. She did not know how to complain. she did not have time for that. The children and her husband were her priorities. Inez lived to be 92 years old and is buried next to her husband in Ralls Texas . . . Look inside

“Wife,” one longtime resident of Blanco Canyon was overheard sighing, “we’ve spent most of our forty years here just waiting for a rain!” Blanco Canyon, on the edge of West Texas’ Cap Rock, is a land of charm and brutality, generosity and denial, exquisite beauty after a rain and harsh death when the rains don’t come. It is a land where over a hundred years ago one Captain J. C. McNeill started a cattle ranch in the mistaken hope that range and weather . . . Read more

by Nellie Witt Spikes

Nellie settled with her family in Emma, the once-thriving county seat of Crosby County. At 18, she moved to a farm near the Cone community with her husband, Jeff Spikes, where they raised wheat, cotton and other crops for 43 years. In twenty-five years of syndicated columns in small-town Texas newspapers between 1930 and 1960, Nellie Witt Spikes described her life on the High Plains, harking back to earlier times and reminiscing about pioneer settlement, farm and small-town culture, women’s work, and the natural history of the flatlands and canyons  . . . Read more

Deadly Dozen tells the story of twelve infamous gunfighters, feared in their own times but almost forgotten today.

Found Inside: "After he reportedly killed a rustler near Estacado in northwest Crosby County, his reputation became so formidable that cattle thieves quit the country as soon as they heard he had been hired to patrol a certain range . . . " Read more Look inside

Through a school assignment, eleven year old Ivy Blackwood discovers the family secret! Her Mom is hiding a grandmother 500 miles away in the small, West Texas town of Crosbyton. This grandmother has promised piles of presents for Ivy. Her mom says her father has invited Ivy's family to come for the Christmas Holidays in Crosbyton . . . Read more Look inside

"Fulcher's First appearance in recorded history occurred sometime in 1886 when he and his wife, Minnie, showed up dead broke in the West Texas Counties of Dickens and Motley.  At some point Fulcher got into a bitter dispute with A. Beemer, a Civil War veteran who worked as a blacksmith on the the sprawling Matador Ranch . . . The Crosby County grand jury promptly indicted Fulcher for the murder of Beemer. However, in the first of a series of blunders . . . " Read more Look inside

Robert Goldthwaite Carter was a US Cavalry officer who participated in the American Civil War and Indian Wars thereafter. Carter would participate in a number of expeditions against the Comanche and other tribes in the Texas-area. It was during one of these campaigns in 1869 that he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his "most distinguished gallantry" against the Comanche in Blanco Canyon in present day Floyd and Crosby Counties . . . Read more Look inside

Advertising the Texas Panhandle and South Plains, 1870-1917

Found Inside: "Two years later the headline for another special edition read, "Crosbyton, Texas in 1920. The Fastest Growing Town in the State--Come and See." Underneath this banner was a "photo" ... Read more Look inside

The distinctive high mesa straddling West Texas and Eastern New Mexico creates a vista that is equal parts sprawling lore and big blue sky. From Lubbock, the area's informal capital, to the farthest reaches of the staked plains known as the Llano Estacado, the land and its inhabitants trace a tradition of tenacity through numberless cycles of dust storms and drought. In 1887, a bison hunter . . . Read more Look inside

More material has been written by and about Henry C. (Hank) Smith, pioneer extraordinary, and his gracious Scottish wife, Elizabeth Boyle (Aunt Hank) Smith, than any other two people in the early history of the South Plains. Magazine articles, articles in historical reviews, newspaper features and some references in early histories have all added to the knowledge about this pioneer couple. Then there were the writings of Uncle Hank and Aunt Hank themselves, and the scope of this story would have been much less complete had they not recorded at least part of . . . Read more

The isolated Canadian River in the Texas Panhandle stretched before John Erickson and Bill Ellzey as they began a journey through time and what the locals call the valley ..."I made our jerky from a recipe given to me by my grandmother, the late Mrs. B.B. Curry of Seminole, Texas. one summer evening, as we were sitting on the her front porch, she told me about her childhood in the old Quaker community of Estacado in Crosby County, where she often saw strips of beef hanging on lines to dry in the sun . . ." Read more Look inside

A crack shot, expert skinner and tanner, seamstress, sculptor, and later writer—a list that only hints at her intelligence and abilities—Ella Elgar Bird Dumont was one of those remarkable women who helped tame the Texas frontier

". . . came to Hank Smith's ranch in Blanco Canyon in northern Crosby County. Collinson was staying there following his leaving the buffalo camp on Tongue River. Upon discovering that Collinson knew  . . . Read more Look inside

Every time a cowhand dug his boot into the stirrup, he knew that this ride could carry him to trail's end. In real stories told by genuine cowboys, this book captures the everyday perils of the "flinty hoofs and devil horns of an outlaw steer, the crush of a half-ton of fury in the guise of a saddle horse, the snap of a rope pulled taut enough to sever digits. . . . Found inside: "Cross-B cowhand Fran Smith planting his boot on a roped maverick in Crosby County, Texas about 1909 " Read more Look inside

by John R Erickson

John Richard Erickson is an American cowboy and author, best known for his Hank the Cowdog series of children's novels. Born in Midland, Texas, he was reared in Perryton in the northern Texas Panhandle. This collection is arranged by Place; From Buffalo to Cattle; The Cowboy; Cowboy Tools; Ranch and Rodeo; Animals; and This and That. "She was every inch a proper lady, but beneath the lace and muslin she was made of steel. In 1880 they left the green and fertile lands in Ohio and followed Reverend Paris Cox to Crosby County, Texas . . . Read more Look inside

by Dannie Gregg and Jeremy A. Walker

With disarming honesty, Dannie Gregg shares the story of how she and her husband, Jordan, began building a life together, raising children, and standing firm in their faith as it was tested by the loss of their son, Cotton. Breaking Through the Clouds shares the hope that the Gregg family found as they grew closer to the Lord following Cotton's death . . . Read more

"Doctor William Hunt, a government physician from Indian Territory came in 1880, and in the fall of the year, the Underhill family and the son-in-law George Singer joined the little group of future plainsmen. Estacado grew large enough to become the first county seat of Crosby County" . . . Read more Look inside

The Autobiography of  Goodwin Hale

Goodwin was born in Spur Texas during the depression. He attended school in Crosbyton. Although he was born with the disabling condition Arthrogryposis, Goodwin Hale, with the encouragement of family and friends, determined to live as normal a life as possible. As a result, he completed college, law school, was a practicing attorney and once was a public official . . . Read more and Look inside

by Jo Wilkinson Hale

The 'graveled road' was, in the very beginning, a boundary or limitation of my activities, set by my Mother so that she would always know my whereabouts. It came to symbolize, to me, the huge boulders one encounters in life and the processes involved to overcome them, thereby creating a smooth 'graveled road'. The setting is life during the Great Depression . . . Read more

When Martha Kirk left her small West Texas hometown in 1983 to move to the middle of the desert in Saudi Arabia, she began a dual life that lasted for five years. Her husband, Terry, was hired to manage a seven-thousand-acre wheat farm for a wealthy sheik, and Martha joined him six months later. The farm, located ninety miles from Riyadh, was isolated and lonely. Within the confines of the farm, Martha continued . . . Read more

Emphasizing the region’s social and economic history, The Great Plains during World War II is the first book to examine the effects of the war on the region and the responses of its residents.

"In the southern plains the shortage of labor for the cotton harvest reaffirmed the pressing need for a mechanical cotton harvester. A farmer in Crosby County Texas reported that he usually paid workers $27.50 per bale to pick cotton but a  mechanical stripper cost him only $2.10 per bale . . . " Read more Look inside

by Nellie Witt Spikes

Thoroughly researched history of Crosby County and High Plains of Texas including extensive list of cattle brands and biographical sketches of the pioneers. Very scarce.

Mary Catherine Fox was born about 1873 and is listed in the 1920 Dickens County TX Census, her husband was Sam H. Kelsy. John Nathan "Nat" Fox was born Feb. 10, 1879 and is listed in the 1910 Crosby County Census with his family . . . Read more