Everything Hereford is known for
Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Hereford.
Hereford, Texas. It's a town built on beef and broad horizons, where the nights are cooler than you'd expect, thanks to the altitude. But beyond the cattle and the fields, there's a certain creative spirit that seems to bubble up from this land.
Hereford, Texas, has a rich history that includes a World War II prisoner-of-war camp for Italian prisoners. This camp was operational until 1947 when it was dismantled. Another significant event in the city's history was the 1975 firing of high school teacher Wayne Woodward for his efforts to establish a local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. His subsequent legal victory against the Hereford Independent School District gained national attention and was documented in the 2022 book 'You Will Never Be One of Us' by Timothy P. Bowman.
Hereford is known as the 'Beef Capital of the World' due to the large number of cattle feedlots in the area. The city's economy is significantly affected by growth in the dairy and ethanol industries. It is also home to the headquarters of the Deaf Smith Electric Cooperative, which serves Deaf Smith, Castro, Parmer, and Oldham Counties.
Hereford's "miracle water" was brought to national fame in 1941 when Dr. Edward Taylor, State Dental Officer, told the American Dental Association that tooth decay was almost unknown here. This ideal situation had been discovered by a local dentist, Dr. George Heard, originally from Alabama. In a cross-section survey, dentists found that few local people had dental cavities. Hereford's mineral-rich water and soil are thought to prevent tooth decay. Demand arose for Hereford water to be shipped all over the U.S. and to foreign nations. (1967)
A wind-driven machine for pumping water. Its use made gardening easier and led to irrigated farming on arid High Plains. With barbed wire, it enabled settlers and stockmen to penetrate region in 1870s. Town had name "Windmill City" because of some 400 towers once on landscape. (1970)
Here as in many Texas counties, ghost towns and ghost post offices outnumber living ones. La Plata (formerly Grenada) thrived as county seat and was a major stop on New Mexico-Amarillo Road, 1880s and 90s. Its 28 houses and businesses were removed to Hereford with the county government in 1898. Ayr, which lost county seat to La Plata, 1890, had an early post office and a few frame buildings. Other nonexistent post offices include Escarbada (on XIT Ranch), 1889; Dean, 1892-99; Mirage (probably on LS Ranch), 1891-94; Kelso, 1907-1908. (1969)
The Union-That-Nothing-Be-Lost collected alms and dispensed many thousands of dollars to missions, some of them in Texas. It was started as a vehicle for mission work by Fr. Paul James Francis Wattson (born Lewis Thomas Wattson) and Sr. Lurana White, Episcopalians who had founded the Society of the Atonement, a Franciscan order. The friars published a monthly magazine, the Lamp , and the sisters published the Candle . As a move toward Christian unity the leaders of the Friars and the Sisters of the Atonement joined the Catholic Church in 1909, along with a group of lay associates. The first mission house for both the friars and the sisters was St. Anthony's Church in Hereford, Texas, where the pastor, Fr. J. A. Campbell, was struggling to maintain a parish and school. The Atonement nuns conducted St. Anthony's School from 1917 to 1938, then left to devote themselves more exclusively to social services. The friars served as pastors of St. Anthony's Church and its missions from 1920 to 1988. During their tenure they helped develop three other parishes. In addition, St. Ann's in Bovina, founded by Campbell, came under the friars' jurisdiction in 1920. St. Teresa's in Friona was founded through the efforts of Fr. Raymond Gillis, an Atonement friar. Gillis moved to Hereford in 1948 and worked among the migrant laborers in the vegetable fields of the area. His flock lived in the barracks of a former prisoner of war camp. In this setting, dubbed the "Labor Camp," Gillis built a church, school, convent, and clinic. He thus also provided the first Catholic church for nearby Friona. As former migrant families settled down in Hereford, they built a new St. Joseph's Church in the city, and many of the services at the Labor Camp were discontinued. By 1980 St. Joseph's in Hereford was the largest parish in the Catholic Diocese of Amarillo . While at Hereford, Campbell had founded the first Catholic periodical in the Panhandle . In answer to the Menace , an anti-Catholic paper, the priest began a monthly, the Antidote . He ran the press himself. When the Atonement friars came to Hereford, Father Paul transferred the printing of the Antidote to Graymoor, New York, where it was published alongside the Lamp until 1931. Gillis served as pastor of Sacred Heart parish in Memphis, Texas, from 1977 to 1981, and built an educational and meeting building there. The Franciscan Sisters of the Atonement opened a house for religious and social services in Sour Lake in 1925. They transferred their center to Dickinson in 1929 in order to serve more people. They closed their mission in Texas in 1946. In 1990 the Friars of the Atonement operated in North and South America, Europe, Jamaica, and Japan. In 1991 one friar, located in Bovina (Diocese of Amarillo), represented the order in Texas.
Tierra Blanca Creek rises in Curry County, New Mexico (at 34°50' N, 103°13' W), and enters Texas in southwestern Deaf Smith County. Then it flows east-northeast for seventy-five miles, across southern Deaf Smith and Randall counties, to join Palo Duro Creek east of Canyon near the old T Anchor Ranch headquarters site in northeastern Randall County (at 35°00' N, 101°54' W). The junction of the two streams forms the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River, although in the upper course it is often called Palo Duro Creek. Tierra Blanca Creek begins in flat to rolling terrain with local escarpments where soils are mostly deep, fine sandy loams and the vegetation comprises hardwood forest, brush, and grasses. It flows through flat areas with local shallow depressions where water-tolerant conifers and grasses cover clay loam and sandy loam soils. The headquarters for the XIT Ranch 's Escarbada Division, now a part of Lubbock's Ranching Heritage Center , was located near the Tierra Blanca eight miles southwest of Garcia Lake. Hereford, originally called Bluewater, was founded near the stream in 1898. Buffalo Lake is formed by a dam on the stream near Umbarger, and a smaller reservoir, McSpadden Lake, is on the Tierra Blanca southeast of downtown Canyon.
59 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.
Hereford, Texas. It's a town built on beef and broad horizons, where the nights are cooler than you'd expect, thanks to the altitude. But beyond the cattle and the fields, there's a certain creative spirit that seems to…
The whole reason a town like this can feed a million cattle a year comes down to a piece of biology most folks never think about. A cow does not have one stomach. It has four chambers, and the biggest of them, the…
Here is a piece of cattle history behind the name on the sign. The town you are approaching started life around eighteen ninety-nine as a railroad stop called Blue Water. When it turned out another Texas town already…
Here is a name with an honest paper trail, and that's rare. When the railroad pushed a new town onto the high plains of the Texas Panhandle near the end of the eighteen hundreds, the first settlers called the place Blue…
That clean white face on a Hereford cow is not an accident of nature. It was engineered by patient farmers in a green English county called Herefordshire, over on the border with Wales, starting back in the seventeen…
Drive the ranch country of Texas and you'll spot black cattle with, oddly, a bright white face. Those are Black Baldies, and they carry a genetic story worth telling. Breeders cross a black Angus with a white-faced…
A lot of people think a Prime grade of beef means the cut is bigger, or leaner, or somehow just better all around. That's not quite right. When the United States Department of Agriculture grades beef, the single most…
There is another Hereford in the world, and it's the granddaddy of this one. Over in England sits the cathedral city of Hereford, seat of the green farming county of Herefordshire, right up against the Welsh border.…
One last thing before we roll on, because this cattle town sits inside a county with a name people always ask about. Hereford is the seat of Deaf Smith County, and yes, it really is spelled Deaf. It honors Erastus…
A wind-driven machine for pumping water. Its use made gardening easier and led to irrigated farming on arid High Plains. With barbed wire, it enabled settlers and stockmen to penetrate region in 1870s. Town had name…
Here as in many Texas counties, ghost towns and ghost post offices outnumber living ones. La Plata (formerly Grenada) thrived as county seat and was a major stop on New Mexico-Amarillo Road, 1880s and 90s. Its 28 houses…
You're driving through Deaf Smith County, named for a legendary scout of the Texas Revolution. Erastus 'Deaf' Smith came to Texas in 1821 and was known for his bravery at the Battle of San Jacinto. The county itself was…
You're driving past the Deaf Smith Courthouse in Hereford, built in 1910. This impressive brick building with marble veneer was the second marble courthouse ever constructed in the United States, costing a hefty…
You're driving past Hereford's first attempt at modern firefighting equipment. This hand-propelled two-wheel fire hose reel cost just $133 back in mid-1913. But after just two months, it was retired for a motor truck…
You're driving past the former site of St. Anthony's Catholic School in Hereford. Established in 1914, initial classes met in a converted county courthouse. A new building went up in 1927 to accommodate more students,…
You're driving past the E.B. Black Residence, a grand home built in 1909 for a prominent Hereford merchant and rancher. E. B. Black moved his family here from Cleburne in 1901, opening a furniture store and becoming a…
Hereford's "miracle water" was brought to national fame in 1941 when Dr. Edward Taylor, State Dental Officer, told the American Dental Association that tooth decay was almost unknown here. This ideal situation had been…
You're driving through Hereford, Texas, a town with a name that might make you think of cattle, and you'd be right! But this town wasn't always called Hereford. It started out as Blue Water, named for the nearby Tierra…
The Union-That-Nothing-Be-Lost collected alms and dispensed many thousands of dollars to missions, some of them in Texas. It was started as a vehicle for mission work by Fr. Paul James Francis Wattson (born Lewis Thomas…
You're driving past the site of Hereford High School. The first school here was a simple frame building in 1898, but attendance grew, leading to new buildings. By 1925, a major bond issue funded this impressive…
Tierra Blanca Creek rises in Curry County, New Mexico (at 34°50' N, 103°13' W), and enters Texas in southwestern Deaf Smith County. Then it flows east-northeast for seventy-five miles, across southern Deaf Smith and…
You're driving through Hereford, where the Mothers' Club founded this park. They started in 1909, and the land was a gift in 1910. The club, which later became the Pioneer Study Club, still helps maintain the park today.
You're driving past the Thompson House in Hereford, built in 1906 by land developer S. S. Evants. Alex Thompson bought it the next year, and by 1908, his mother Jennie and her sister Jessie were living here too. These…
You're driving through Hereford, where this college started out as a public school back in 1902. Just a year later, it was handed over to the Christian Church and went through a couple of name changes, eventually…
Hereford (Hereford, TX) placed on the 4A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Kalub Ramirez (4 HR); Kayden Alonzo (2 HR).
Hereford became famous for a very strange reason: its children had almost no cavities. A local dentist, Dr. George W. Heard, noticed it first, and word spread until dentists across the country were astonished by the…
In the mid-20th century, Hereford became an unexpected center for public health research, thanks to its water chemistry. Scientists were puzzled by the town's incredibly low rates of childhood dental cavities, and the…
Three and a half miles southeast of Hereford lies the site of a forgotten piece of World War II history. This is where Camp Hereford stood, the second-largest prisoner-of-war camp in the country, holding some five…
As you drive through downtown Hereford, you can't miss the Deaf Smith County Courthouse. This is the county's second courthouse, put up between 1909 and 1910 for about $125,000, and it is not the plain limestone box…
You're driving past the site of a World War II prisoner of war camp, right here in Deaf Smith County. Known as the Hereford Military Reservation, it held about 7,000 Italian soldiers captured in North Africa starting in…
You're driving past P. O. W. Camp Chapel. This chapel is one of the few physical reminders of the days this site served as an Italian prisoner of war camp during World War II. The prisoners, several of them fine artists…
You're driving through Castro County, and right near here, during World War II, was the Hereford Military Reservation. This was a prisoner of war camp holding about 7,000 Italian soldiers. They worked on local farms and…
You're driving through Castro County, Texas, and right here is the land that John S. Summerfield helped shape. Born in England, Summerfield came to Texas in 1876, working for Jot Gunter and William B. Munson, Sr. His…
You're driving through Summerfield, Texas, a town with a name change story worth remembering. It was founded in the late 1890s and first known as Boom. But postal authorities weren't having it, finding there was already…
San Antonio, you see, isn't just a city; it's a palimpsest, layers of history etched onto the landscape. It started, of course, with the indigenous people, long before any Europeans dreamt of this place. Then came the…
If you glance over at the railroad tracks, you're looking at the very reason the town of Dean exists. In 1904 and 1905 the Wichita Falls and Oklahoma Railway picked this spot in northwest Clay County for a switch, and…
Dean may look like a quiet, unassuming place, but it has a name and an independent streak worth knowing. The town began around 1904 and 1905, when the Wichita Falls and Oklahoma Railway picked this spot for a switch - a…
You're driving past the site of Dawn, which had the second post office in Deaf Smith County, opening in 1889. Pioneers named this place for the 'dawning of a new country.' The Santa Fe Railroad arrived with a boxcar…
You're driving through West Texas, maybe near Deaf Smith County, and you're passing through a landscape Jim Cook knew well. Cook was a legendary, larger-than-life ranch foreman and one of the first sheriffs of Deaf…
Kelso, in west central Deaf Smith County, was a hoax set up by George G. Wright, a Kansas City land promoter, as a means of selling land in the early 1900s. The land was from the 80,000-acre Kelso Block of the XIT Ranch…
Ayr, in Deaf Smith County, was established in January 1890 when the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway sent a party of fifteen surveyors under Robert E. Montgomery and H. H. Granger to survey a projected spur from…
Glenrio straddles the Texas-New Mexico border in northwestern Deaf Smith County. In 1905 the area was opened to small farmers, who settled on choice 150-acre plots. In 1906 the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railway…
La Plata, originally named Grenada, was founded in 1890 by the XIT Ranch interests when Deaf Smith County was organized. The town engaged in a heated contest with neighboring Ayr to be the county seat, an honor that…
You're driving through Deaf Smith County, out on the western edge of the Texas Panhandle. This land was once home to Plains Apaches, then Comanches and Kiowas, before the Texas Revolution scout Erastus 'Deaf' Smith gave…
Bootleg (Bootleg Corner) is in southwestern Deaf Smith County. There are two stories about the origin of its name. One associates the name with Moonshine Sheep Camp, where a moonshine still was once located; the…
Dawn, on U.S. Highway 60 in eastern Deaf Smith County, originated in 1887 when Jim Moore, ranch boss for the T Anchor Ranch , built a dugout about six miles southwest of what is now the townsite. Two years later J. H.…
You're driving past Gilbreath-Cowsert House. 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…
You're driving through Dimmitt, the county seat of Castro County, which was organized in 1891. That same year, this spot was set aside as the town square. You're passing the site of three courthouses! The first burned…
You're driving past Shoot-out on Jones Street. 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…
You're driving past Umbarger, a community that started as a wagon yard in 1895 by Civil War veteran S.G. Umbarger. The railroad named a switch after him in 1898, and soon after, German-Catholic families arrived,…
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…
You're driving past the site of the old Arney School in Nazareth. Opened in 1901, this one-room schoolhouse served the children of early settlers and ranch hands. The school operated until 1953, when it was consolidated…
You're driving through western Randall County, right near the town of Umbarger. This community owes its existence to rancher S. G. Umbarger, who in 1895 leased this land from the railroad. By 1897, he'd established a…
You're driving through what was once a hotbed of Texas Ranger activity, and right here, you're passing through the territory of Ira Aten, a lawman who saw it all. Aten was inspired to join the Rangers after witnessing…
You're driving through West Texas, and right here in Dimmitt, you're near the birthplace of Texas bluegrass! Back in 1946, a new sound was born in Nashville with Earl Scruggs joining Bill Monroe. But here in Dimmitt,…
You're driving through what's now Castro County, but back in the late 1800s, this was wide-open frontier. Right here, James W. Carter and his brothers were among the very first to settle this land. In 1879, they drove…
You're driving through Castro County, a place that owes its existence to a land development company and a close friendship. Back in 1890, the Bedford Town and Land Development Company, led by H. G. Bedford, bought land…
You're driving through Dimmitt, the county seat of Castro County. This town owes its existence to a land sale back in March of 1890. The Bedford Town and Land Company bought up land and laid out a townsite, naming it…
You're driving through Castro County, formed from territories that once belonged to Young and Bexar. It was officially created on August 21st, 1876, but wasn't organized until December 8th, 1891. The county is named in…