Name: Dimmitt, Texas
Address: Dimmitt, TX

Dimmitt, TX RoadyGoat

On April 10, 2023, an explosion and subsequent fire at South Fork Dairy, about 10 miles south of Dimmitt, resulted in the deaths of an estimated 18,000 dairy cattle.

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Dimmitt, TX RoadyGoat

Dimmitt, Texas, might seem like just another quiet spot on the map, a place where the wind whispers through cotton fields and pronghorn antelope graze on the shortgrass prairie. But look a little closer, and you'll find that even a town this size has its stories, its brush with fame.

Dimmitt, TX RoadyGoat

Dimmitt's history began in March 1890 when the Bedford Town and Land Company purchased land and established the townsite. The town was named after Rev. W.C. Dimmitt, brother-in-law of H.G. Bedford who oversaw the sale of lots. Despite competition, Dimmitt was voted county seat on December 18, 1891. By this time, the town had two stores, a post office, a hotel, a school, and a resident doctor. A wooden courthouse was completed in 1892 and replaced by a brick structure after a fire in 1906. A brick school building was completed in 1910. In July 1928, the Fort Worth and Denver South Plains Railway extended to Dimmitt, leading to its incorporation. The 1930s saw the founding of a hospital and a county library, and a new county courthouse replaced the earlier red-brick building in 1938.

Aten, Ira

1878

Ira Aten, Texas Ranger and Panhandle lawman, the second of four sons of Austin C. and Kate (Dunlap) Aten, was born on September 3, 1862, in Cairo, Illinois. In 1876 the family moved to Texas, where Ira's father, a Methodist minister, rode circuit for his church. They settled on a farm near Round Rock. On July 20, 1878, Ira witnessed the death of Sam Bass and was inspired to become a lawman. He enlisted in the Texas Rangers and was assigned to Company D under Capt. Lamar P. Sieker, headquartered at Camp King, near Uvalde. Aten served in McCulloch, Brown, and Navarro counties before 1888. In the summer of 1887 he and John R. Hughes trailed and killed Judd Roberts. Aten served more than six years with the frontier battalion, during which time he attained the rank of sergeant. In August 1889 Governor Lawrence S. Ross sent him in charge of a ranger squad to quell the Jaybird-Woodpecker War in Fort Bend County. Aten and Imogen Boyce, a cousin of Albert G. Boyce , were married at the Central Christian Church in Austin on February 3, 1892, and afterward set up housekeeping at Aten's dugout ranchhouse near Dimmitt. They had three sons and two daughters. Citizens of Castro County, led by County Judge Lysius Gough , drafted Ira as sheriff in 1893. Imogen became the county jailer. By 1895 Aten had organized a ranch police force of some twenty cowboys armed with Winchester rifles. He stayed on for a time as division foreman and helped organize the first bank at Hereford, the new Deaf Smith county seat. In 1904, when the XIT Ranch began to break up, Aten moved his family to California, where they developed an irrigated farm and ranch. In 1923 Aten was elected to the Imperial Valley District board, which was concerned mainly with bringing water and electricity to the area by such means as Hoover Dam and the All-American Canal. During his later years Aten compiled the memoirs of his Wild West days, which were published in J. Marvin Hunter 's Frontier Times magazine in 1945. At age ninety Aten still could ride and shoot straight. He was called the "last of the old Texas Rangers" when he died of pneumonia, on August 5, 1953, and was buried in the Evergreen Cemetery at El Centro.

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Bluegrass Music

1946

The story of bluegrass in Texas is at once a mirror of the development of this genre at the national level plus minor influences from Texas music, particularly western swing and contest fiddling. It is generally agreed that the bluegrass sound came into being when the three-finger banjo of Earl Scruggs was added to Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys band in Nashville in 1946. Monroe was already a major star of the Grand Ole Opry and Scruggs’s hard driving banjo gave uniqueness to his sound which complemented Monroe’s high tenor vocals and percussive mandolin playing. Listeners in Texas and over much of the nation heard this new sound live over clear channel WSM in Nashville and on Monroe’s records. Monroe’s style and songs were a part of country music at the time, thus country bands everywhere began including Monroe songs in their repertoire, though most lacked the instrumentation, especially the banjo to duplicate his sound. In Texas in the late 1940s a young Tom Uhr (pronounced Ore) typified many groups across the state by singing a few Monroe songs in shows around San Antonio. Unlike most, however, though guitar was his main instrument, Uhr was inspired, after seeing Scruggs in person, to learn some three-finger banjo in order to play one or two numbers with it on his shows. At the same time in the West Texas town of Dimmitt, the three Mayfield brothers formed a band devoted to reproducing the style of Bill Monroe exactly—the mandolin, fiddle, open-stringed guitar rhythm and harmony singing—except that they had no banjo. It is truly ironic that they are acknowledged as being the first Texas bluegrass group while lacking the one thing which most fans and scholars alike identify as an absolute requirement for any bluegrass band, i.e. the five-string banjo. The Mayfields were invited to open for Bill Monroe on a West Texas tour in 1950, and for the first time they got to hear and jam with a real live banjo player. Some 200 miles away in Tioga, a young Joe Hood was trying to learn the five-string banjo, but the Mayfields had no knowledge of him or of Tom Uhr. The early bluegrass groups in Texas were regional in character with no awareness of bands or individuals in other regions. The most graphic evidence of this came in the early 1960s when there were separate groups in Dallas, Houston, and Tyler named the Bluegrass Ramblers, each unaware of the others. Abilene’s Black Mountain Boys, who campaigned for George Herbert Walker Bush in his unsuccessful 1964 senate bid, believed they were the only bluegrass band in the state. The label “bluegrass” was not used for the music until the late 1950s. Since Bill Monroe and groups that played similar music were a part of the national country music scene, those semi-professional groups in Texas who played this style saw themselves as country musicians. The means that they employed to promote their music were identical to those employed by other aspiring country groups and artists. The Mayfield Brothers, along with former Bill Monroe sideman Bill Myrick, became regulars on the live Saturday night KSEL Jamboree show broadcast out of Lubbock in 1949. In 1950 they appeared on the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport and were offered repeat performances there as well as a recording contract. The group’s prospects were cut short when Bill Monroe invited guitarist Edd Mayfield to join his Bluegrass Boys in Nashville. Mayfield did three different stints with Monroe and returned to revive the Mayfield Brothers in between until his death on the road from leukemia in 1958. Also in the mid-1950s the Dixie Drifters were appearing on Houston Jamboree over KNUZ in that city and were written up in Country Song Roundup . In Dallas in the late 1950s a bluegrass group known as the Country Cut-Ups was appearing on Big D Jamboree . Both of these groups released 45 rpm records to sell at performances and sought airplay from country deejays. The Cut-Ups also had a weekly television show in Tyler and released an LP in 1964.

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Castro County Courthouses

1891

This site was set aside as the Dimmitt town square in 1891, the year Castro County was formally organized. Temporary court facilities were set up in J. N. Morrison's office while the first courthouse was built. An ornate two-story structure, it burned in 1906 after being hit by lighting. A brick courthouse with a central dome, built in 1908, was dedicated at a community picnic. It served until the 1930s, but was razed to make room for the present stone building. Built with Works Progress Administration labor, Castro County's third courthouse opened in 1939. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

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Shoot-out on Jones Street

1891

At an 1891 meeting to discuss the selection of a Castro County seat, words were exchanged between Ira Aten, a retired Texas Ranger speaking on behalf of Castro City, and Andrew McClelland, a spokesman for Dimmitt. The inflammatory remarks led to a gunfight between the two men on Dec. 23, five days after Dimmitt was chosen county seat. In an exchange of shots in the middle of Jones Street, Aten wounded Andrew McClelland and his brother Hugh. Aten was acquitted of the assault charges and a short time later was appointed Castro County sheriff. (1983)

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Carter, James W.

1879

James W. Carter, the first permanent White resident of Castro County, was born on February 13, 1845, and spent much of his youth in Stephenville, where he grew up in the cattle business. In 1874 he became one of the first settlers to locate on Jim Ned Creek near Buffalo Gap in Taylor County. Two years later A. J. Breeding, a native of West Virginia, took his family from Minnesota to Cedar Gap, four miles from Buffalo Gap; in 1878 Carter married Breeding's daughter Ellen. In 1879 he and his half-brothers John and Lish took some 300 cattle to the vicinity of present Pecos, Texas. The following year they gathered the remainder of the herd, about 3,000 head, and established a headquarters about eight miles below the future townsite. To this ranch the Carters freighted supplies and brought their wives; Lish Carter married Ellen's sister Jennie in 1881. They resided in half-dugout huts of native materials ( see DUGOUT ). After the Texas and Pacific Railway came through in 1882 the Carters sold their Pecos ranch to Colonel Gottard of St. Louis and returned briefly to Taylor County. In 1883 J. W. Carter purchased seventy-two sections in Castro County at seventy-nine cents an acre. He, his wife, and three small children made their way in wagons from Taylor County to their new homestead, bringing with them carpenters, lumber, all necessary supplies and tools to build and equip a four-room house, and a year's supply of groceries. Carter established headquarters on the north side of Running Water Draw about fourteen miles southwest of the site of present Dimmitt. He fenced in eighteen sections for a horse pasture and erected a two-story, four-room dugout on top of the slope overlooking the draw. On his 53,000-acre range, he grazed 3,000 head of cattle that bore his Seven-Up brand. Elizabeth Carter, born in 1886, was the first White child born in the county; the Carters eventually had two sons and three daughters. The family obtained supplies at Colorado City and after 1887 at Amarillo. In 1887 Carter added to his herd 15,000 two-year-old steers from Taylor County. From 1884 to 1890 the Carters were the only settlers in Castro County. Their nearest neighbors were at the Springlake and Escarbada divisions of the XIT Ranch and C. C. Slaughter 's Circle Cross, then managed by Ellen's brother, Bill Breeding. Lish and Jennie Breeding Carter settled on Tierra Blanca Creek, in Deaf Smith County, in 1886. As the family grew, J. W. and Ellen Carter added to their house and later began hosting Saturday night dances. Mrs. Carter also won a reputation among area cowboys and nesters as a nurse and midwife. In 1888 the Carters hired Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bayne of Amarillo as a governess and tutor for their children since there was no school for them to attend. After Dimmitt was founded and Castro County was organized in 1891, Miss Bayne became the county's first schoolteacher. To help make up the list of 150 residents required for county organization, Carter is said to have given fictitious surnames to his horses. In 1891 he went into a business partnership with two store owners in Amarillo. Unfortunately that move proved unwise, for by 1895 the Seven-Up Ranch was encumbered with a $52,000 debt. Hoping to save at least part of this land and cattle, Carter bought into the store, only to learn that there was a $100,000 note against it. Thus he was compelled to sell the land at public auction in May 1895 to pay his numerous creditors. The highest bidder was the Scottish American Mortgage Company. The Carters moved to Dimmitt, where they established the thirty-room Castro Hotel, one of the first Panhandle lodgings to have piped hot and cold water. They managed this business until Carter's death on June 25, 1916. The following year Ellen sold it with the provision that it would be her home for as long as she lived. She died on May 16, 1942, and the hotel was subsequently sold to J. E. Hyatt and moved to Plainview. J. W. and Ellen Carter are buried in the Castro

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Gilbreath-Cowsert House

1909

Tennessee native Jeff T. Gilbreath moved his family to this area in 1905. The owner of a local mercantile store, he built this house in 1909. He sold it in 1910 to county attorney Mark Cowsert, whose family lived here until 1912. The house changed ownership a number of times before the Castro County Museum purchased it in 1976. A fine example of early 20th-century vernacular housing, it features a bay window and hipped roof with gables. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark-1991

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Dimmitt, Texas

Music in Dimmitt

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Dimmitt, TX RoadyGoat

Dimmitt, TX RoadyGoat

Dimmitt, TX RoadyGoat

Aten, Ira

Bluegrass Music

Castro County Courthouses

Shoot-out on Jones Street

Carter, James W.

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