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

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.

Traveling in covered wagons and by train, young Martha Jane Smith and her family left Texas in the early 1900s to homestead on the High Plains of Eastern New Mexico. Determination was ignited early in Mattie's life-beginning with a rattlesnake bite that meant almost certain death in those days. When Mattie was eleven, her mother died. When Mattie was 22, her husband died from the Spanish Flu. A second marriage produced three sons; the first died one day before his first birthday.

" In 1938 Mattie and Mr. Kinney were living in Portales when he was asked to manage a farm near Hereford Texas. Mattie gave up her job  . . . Read more Look inside

Interned in a camp at Hereford in the Texas panhandle, more than 3,000 Italian POWs spent the last years of World War II an ocean away from their family and friends. In the last year of the war, the prisoners suffered a siege of hunger dictated by government-ordered cutbacks in rations. The men called this episode la fame and found it difficult to supplement their meager meals. A handful of men in camp were artists, and it was this small group of prisoners who struck a deal with the priest of a nearby Catholic church. In exchange for a home-cooked meal each noon, the artists agreed to decorate the plain church with murals and carvings . . . Read More . . . for more like this please see Texas Church History

by Edgar Mitchell

Edgar Mitchell was born September 17, 1930 in Hereford Texas. In February 1971, as Apollo 14 astronaut Mitchell hurtled Earthward through space, he was engulfed by a profound sense of universal connectedness. He intuitively sensed that his presence and that of the planet in the window were all part of a deliberate, universal process and that the glittering cosmos itself was in some way conscious. The experience was so overwhelming, Mitchell knew his life would never be the same . . . Read more Look inside

By Hereford resident Gerald McCathern

The continuing adventures of Colonel Jim Cole and Ned Armstrong as they struggle against buffalo hunters, cattle rustlers, Indians and outlaws to carve out their ranching empire . . .  Read more Look inside

By Hereford resident Gerald McCathern

In 1875, Hidetown and Tascosa, in the Texas Panhandle, were known as the Sodom and Gomorrah of the plains. With 13 saloons and 500 prostitutes in Hidetown, and a slightly lesser number in Tascosa, sin was a thriving business. The nearest law was two hundred miles to the south, so the law of the Panhandle belonged . . . Read more Look inside

On January 31, 1971, Navy Captain Dr. Edgar Mitchell embarked on a journey into outer space, resulting in his becoming the sixth man to walk on the Moon. The Apollo 14 mission was NASA’s third manned lunar landing. This historic journey ended safely nine days later on February 9, 1971. It was an audacious time in the history of mankind. For Mitchell, however, the most extraordinary journey was yet to come  . . . Read more Look Inside  More books by Edgar Mitchell

John Hendrix, a native Texan, lived in the West Texas of which he wrote for most of his life. His articles appeared in West Texas Today, The Hereford Journal, and other publications, in addition to The Cattleman. Hendrix died in Sweetwater in 1952 at the age of sixty-four.

Here are accurate, detailed, fascinating descriptions of the day-to-day life of the cowboy, the chuck-wagon cook, the range boss: narratives rich in human interest, in pathos, comedy, drama. . . Read more Look inside

By Hereford resident Gerald McCathern

What does a thieving crow have to do with a hidden treasure? You will find out as McCathern, in the style of Louis L'Amour, keeps the reader spell-bound, as he weaves a fictional story around historical events and characters during the settling of the Texas Panhandle, 1876 to 1881. It is a fact, according to Charles Goodnight, that in 1876 two sheepmen were murdered in Palo Duro Canyon by the noted Mexican outlaw, Sostenes L'Archeveque, and twenty-five . . . Read more Look inside

By Hereford resident Gerald McCathern

Jim Cole, a one armed ex-confederate Colonel, and his young side-kick, Ned Armstrong, battle the weather, Indians, buffalo hunters and the army to carve out a cattle empire in the high grass country of the Llano Estacado, during the years 1865 to 1875. At a time when no other white man would enter this Comanche stronghold, Cole and Armstrong make friends with the great Comanche chief, Quanah Parker, and trailed five thousand head of Texas longhorns from  . . . Read more Look inside

In 1960, a time in America when it was illegal for whites to marry nonwhites, Gloria Kilhaven, the 20 year daughter of a white farmer in Texas, and Nico Modesto, the 20 year old son of a Mexican American migrant farm worker family, fell in love only to incur the wrath of a racist world bent on preventing them from realizing their love. "She was Gloria Kilhaven, his thirty year old daughter, and as the car made its way closer to Hereford, Texas and closer to the father she had not seen in ten years, she wondered how a man she had grown up to know as sweet and kind could . . ." Read more Look inside

Drawing upon stories told to her by men and women who were with the LS during the 1880’s and later years, Dulcie Sullivan presents her narrative in a clear, straightforward, but sympathetic manner that gives the reader a vivid sense of how life was really lived there in those times. "The LS Ranch was cut in half, and grass in Deaf Smith County that had been used by Lee and Scott now belonged to the XIT. The tenure of free-range rights was over in the Panhandle, and disgusted cowboys swore bobwire had ruined the country"  . . . Read more Look inside

The story of the farm protest of 1977 thru 1982 by members of the American Agriculture Movement

As 30 of the strange looking vehicles pulled up before the Safeway Wholesale Food Warehouse, blocking loaded trucks from leaving the facility, a gray haired farmer stepped out of the lead tractor to be confronted by an excited and frustrated manager. Excitement ran high as a completely bewildered manager shouted, "What in hell is going on here?"  . . . Read more

Loneliness pervaded the lives of pioneers on the American plains, including the empty expanses of West Texas.

"Hobart McManigal of Happy, Texas, and his father used to ride over to Hereford, Texas, to fish. Until around 1915 there was one place along the trail were all that was visible was a lone windmill. "you couldn't see another house. You couldn't see a fence. You couldn't see nothing but that windmill " Read more, Look inside

by Donald E Green

The scarcity of surface water which has so marked the Great Plains is even more characteristic of its subdivision, the Texas High Plains. Settlers on the plateau were forced to use pump technology to tap the vast ground water resources—the underground rain—beneath its flat surface . . . Read more

Featuring a side of Tejano history too often neglected, author Arnoldo De León shows that people of Spanish-Mexican descent were not passive players in or, worse, absent from West Texas history but instead were active agents at the center of it . . . Read more Look inside

Route 66 stretches across 178 miles and through seven counties in the Texas Panhandle.

There is history, scenery, and adventure waiting on Route 66, which follows the trail of the Native Americans, conquistadors, cattle and oil barons, cowboys, and Dust Bowl refugees. With such sites as the blazing neon sign at Shamrock's U-Drop Inn and the quiet ruins of Glenrio in Deaf Smith County, Route 66 in Texas is still "The Main Street of America."  . . .  Read more Look inside

By Linda West Eckhardt from Hereford Texas

 . . . Look inside

Deaf Smith County Unclaimed Estates

These Deceased Residents of Deaf Smith County Left a total $39,034 in Unclaimed Money for their heirs. Know the Heirs? Let them know they can collect it from the Texas Comptroller's Office . . . See the list

Deaf Smith County Treasures