Lamesa, Texas

Chicken-fried steak is a dish in which a cut of beef, usually thin and selected from the round, is breaded and fried. (Occasionally, some restaurants have also cooked a cut of pork.) The method of preparation is similar to that of fried chicken, which explains the name. The Texas staple is most often served with mashed potatoes and covered with cream gravy. The origin of chicken-fried steak—also known as country-fried steak or pan-fried steak—is debatable. According to foodtimeline.org, an independent research project created in 1999, an early printed American recipe for chicken-fried steak appeared in the Los Angeles Times in 1924. Subsequent recipes appeared in such diverse publications as the Winnipeg Free Press in 1936 and the Household Searchlight Recipe Book of Topeka, Kansas, in 1949. The dish, however, was around long before that. Other food historians have stated that recipes for batter-fried steaks appeared in Southern cookbooks as far back as the early 1800s. Prior to modern food safety practices and methods of food storage, the fine art of “making tough cuts of meat palatable” was a necessity; breading and frying often did the trick. Some food historians assert that chicken-fried steak is a descendant of Wiener schnitzel, a similar dish traditionally made with veal rather than beef that was brought to America by German immigrants who would eventually take it to Texas. Another theory claims that Jimmy Don Perkins, a short-order cook in a cafe in Lamesa, Texas, invented the dish by accident in 1911. According to the legend, Jimmy Don mistook two separate orders, one for chicken and one for fried steak, for one strange request and chicken-fried steak was born. In Texas, Pig Stand restaurants (the first opened in Dallas in 1921) took credit for the creation of the chicken-fried steak sandwich. In 2008 the last remaining Pig Stand (located in San Antonio on Broadway) of the once extensive cafe chain still served the sandwich. According to Robb Walsh, former food editor of the Austin Chronicle and winner of the James Beard Journalism Award for Magazine Feature Writing, there are three distinct versions of chicken-fried steak. The East Texas version is dipped in egg and then flour, similar to the way Southern fried chicken is prepared. Central Texas’s version is made with bread crumbs rather than flour, much like Weiner schnitzel. There is also a West Texas version that is made without dipping the meat in egg; this is related to what cowboys called pan-fried steak. While there are many recipes for chicken-fried steak, most connoisseurs maintain that preparing the true dish has become a lost art. While the recipe started out as a necessity for making use of meat of questionable quality, it developed into a Texas delicacy—“the perfect marriage of meat, batter, and grease.” The dish’s popularity has brought it full circle into the modern age of fast food in which shorter cook times and larger servings have taken precedence over taste. In the interest of saving time and money, restaurants stumbled onto the same revelation old-timers discovered years ago: with enough batter and grease, you can serve up meats of lesser quality. The correct preparation of Texas chicken-fried steak takes time. The meat is pounded thin or run through a tenderizer, then dipped in milk before being placed in a bag of salt, pepper, and flour. The meat is then fried until golden brown in a small amount of shortening (preferably in a cast-iron skillet). The leftover grease and “drippings” that remain in the skillet are used to make gravy. Most recipes for chicken-fried steak are simple and similar, but there is as much art to getting it right as there is science. According to Walsh in his The Texas Cowboy Cookbook , the three most common mistakes are “under-seasoning the batter, getting overzealous with a tenderizing mallet, and overheating the oil.” Like its origin and methods of preparation, there is much debate about where to find the best chicken-f

Lamesa, the county seat of Dawson County, is on U.S. highways 180 and 87, State highways 137 and 349, Farm roads 179, 826, and 827, and the Santa Fe Railroad, and Sulphur Springs Draw, sixty miles south of Lubbock in the central part of the county. It was platted in July 1903 by Frank Connor, J. J. Lindsey, J. F. Barron, and several others. A. L. Wasson, a member of the first town committee, impressed by the tabletop flatness of the surrounding terrain, offered La Mesa and Lamesa as possible names. Although he preferred the Spanish version, the committee voted in favor of the other. A post office was granted in 1904 with Harrison B. Oliver as postmaster. Lamesa won the county seat election by five votes over the rival town of Stemmons on March 20, 1905. A town meeting the next day invited the citizens and merchants of Stemmons to move to the new county seat, with an offer of free lots for businesses and help in moving houses. The offer was accepted and effected within several days. Early businesses in Lamesa included a hardware and furniture store, a hotel, a blacksmith shop, and several general stores. A school was first established in 1904. The town had a brass band by 1908. The Santa Fe Railroad secured the town's future when it arrived on August 4, 1910. Electrical service became available in 1916. The first church building in Lamesa was the Methodist church, which was completed in 1907 with help from other local denominations. Baptist, Church of Christ, and Presbyterian churches followed by 1915. Lamesa prospered from farming and later through the development of the oil industry. The population was 1,188 in 1920 and rose to 6,038 in 1940 and to 10,706 in 1950. The peak years came in the 1960s, when the United States census reported 12,438 residents. Afterward the population fell slightly and stabilized around 11,559 in the 1970s and 1980s. In the mid-1980s Lamesa, the county's banking and marketing center, produced agricultural products, oil services, food processing, clothing and textiles, farming equipment, and cotton. Howard County Junior College, the Dawson County Museum, a hospital, a library, and several nursing homes are located in the city. In 1990 the population was 10,809. By 2000 the population was 9,952.

Preston Earnest Smith, businessman, legislator, and the fortieth governor of Texas, was born on March 8, 1912, in Williamson County. He was the son of Charles Kirby Smith and Effie Smith. One of thirteen children, he grew up in Williamson County until he was twelve, when his family moved to Lamesa in Dawson County, where he graduated from Lamesa High School in 1930. Smith attended and was graduated from Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University) with a bachelor of business arts degree in 1934. While in one of his college classes, he was seated alphabetically next to Ima Smith (no relation). Preston Smith and Ima Smith married in 1935. They had two children. Smith became active in the movie theater business in Lubbock as well as real estate enterprises and developed the political name recognition he needed to win election in 1944 to the Texas House of Representatives. A conservative Democrat, Smith served three terms in the House and in 1956 was elected to the Texas Senate. In 1962, the same year that John B. Connally was elected governor, Smith was elected lieutenant governor. In 1968, when Connally chose not to seek reelection, Smith sought and won the Democratic nomination for the governorship amongst a crowded field of candidates. Smith was known for his polka dot neckties, which he claimed he began wearing in 1962 after Gov. Price Daniel urged Smith to do something to help make himself stand out. During the 1968 gubernatorial campaign, Smith's campaign sent letters to approximately 47,000 Texas families named Smith and asked, "Don't you think it is about time one of us was governor?" Known for his relentless work ethic and corny sense of humor, Smith was the first lieutenant governor to be directly elected to the governorship and the first West Texan to be elected. He was inaugurated as governor on January 16, 1969, and was re-elected to a second term in 1970. During his first term, Smith focused on education issues, including a ten-year pay raise program for teachers. His administration also submitted a state water plan, which failed to pass. Smith's governorship in his second term was tainted by the Sharpstown stock-fraud scandal , which initially focused on charges that state officials profited from certain business deals in exchange for the passage of legislation favored by Houston developer Frank Sharp. Though Smith was never charged with a crime, he was "labeled an unindicted coconspirator," and the scandal grew to such proportions that Texas voters were in an anti-incumbent mood. Smith ran and lost in the 1972 Democratic primary to Dolph Briscoe, Jr. of Uvalde, who would go on to win the general election and be sworn in as Smith's successor in January, 1973. Smith unsuccessfully attempted a comeback in 1978 and retired from politics. After his political career ended, Smith retired to Lubbock. He remained active in local business and civic affairs and worked as a fundraiser for Texas Tech University. His papers are in the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at the university library. (As governor he had signed into law the legislation that established the Texas Tech University School of Medicine.) In 1981 Gov. William Clements appointed him to the Texas College and University Coordinating Board, where he served as chairman until 1985. Texas Tech University honored Smith by erecting a statue of him in the Administration Building courtyard on the campus. Smith died from pneumonia at Texas Tech University Medical Center in Lubbock on October 18, 2003, at the age of ninety-one. His wife Ima had died in 1998. He was survived by a son, a daughter, and their respective families. Smith was buried in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin. The city of Lubbock honored Smith by renaming its airport the Preston Smith International Airport in 2004.

(1/4 mi. N) W.C. Bishop of Chicago, Ill., and wealthy lumberman George N. Fletcher established the OTO (later Bar TO) ranch about 1887 on Fletcher's extensive landholdings in Dawson County. A post office was opened at the ranch headquarters on May 15, 1889, and named Chicago, both in honor of Bishop's home town and in humorous reference to the sparse population of the area. The postal facility served other large ranches in this vicinity, such as C. C. Slaughter's Long S. In the 1890s, Fletcher left the ranching venture, and A. F. Crowley and W. H. Godair became Bishop's partners. By that time, a village had begun to grow up around the post office. B. A. Oden served as OTO ranch foreman and postmaster of Chicago from 1894 to 1903. When Walter Stemmons replaced him in both positions in 1904, the settlement was renamed Stemmons. The same year, a post office was established in the new town of Lamesa, two miles south of Chicago. Dawson County was organized in 1905, and both towns entered the contest for county seat. When Lamesa won, residents of Chicago quickly relocated their homes and businesses there. The school and Baptist and Methodist churches also moved to Lamesa, within days, the community of Chicago had disappeared. (1977)

By the 1920s, Dawson County’s rapidly expanding cotton economy was outgrowing its labor supply. Like other areas of the country, Lamesa began to rely on migrant laborers from Mexico to increase the available pool of seasonal workers. One effort to federally regulate migrant labor was the creation of farm labor communities to ensure a dependable source of labor for farmers and to provide safe and sanitary living facilities for migrant workers and their families. The Lamesa Farm Workers Community, present day Los Ybanez, operated from 1942 until 1980. In 1941, the Farm Security Administration approved an application for a migrant labor camp on 50 acres of land southeast of Lamesa. The first families moved in on August 17, 1942. The Lamesa Complex consisted of 50 residential buildings, a gate house, manager’s residence, and a community center. Unlike other labor communities, Lamesa provided its residents with indoor plumbing and running water. Additionally, Lamesa offered a medical clinic, educational programs, nursery, recreational activities, and religious services. The families who lived at Lamesa harvested cotton, worked in cotton gins, cotton oil mills, feed mills, and egg processing plants. They did not pay rent for their homes but were expected to perform maintenance work around the camp and contribute to the camp welfare fund. The little time available for social activities included traditional Mexican entertainment and reflected their bicultural background. Residents played baseball, observed Mexican and U.S. Holidays, and enjoyed Conjunto music. In 1980, the Ybanez family bought the community to provide low-income housing for Hispanic families. (2010)

Created February 1, 1858. Recreated August 21, 1876 from Bexar Territory. Organized February 13, 1905. Named in honor of Nicholas Mosby Dawson 1808-1842 who fought at the Battle of San Jacinto and fell at Dawson's Massacre. Lamesa, County Seat