Pampa, Texas

Everything Pampa is known for

5 songs mention this city 1 artist from here

Music in Pampa

Songs About Pampa

The President Song
Cross Canadian Ragweed
55%
"The capital's in Pampa, Texas"
Merry Christmas from Texas, y’all
Tracy Byrd
51%
"From South Padre up to Pampa"
Dusty Old Dust (So Long It’s Been Good to Know Yuh)
Woody Guthrie
22%
"In the month called April, county called Gray"
Texas Oil Field
Woody Guthrie
1%
"and Pampa"
Woody Guthrie
Jimmy LaFave
"Woody Guthrie"

Artists From Pampa

S
Stealing Handshakes
indie

Rivers & Roads in Song near Pampa

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Pampa.

Highway I 40 20 songs Canadian River 7 songs U.S. Route 66 19 songs

Musical Heritage

Coney Island Cafe RoadyGoat

1933

At 114 West Foster Avenue in Pampa, the Coney Island Cafe has been serving since 1933 — opened by a Greek immigrant named Bill Coronis, and still built around a yellow Formica counter lined with red swivel stools. A chili dog will run you a buck seventy-five. But that counter has a real claim to fame: it was Woody Guthrie's favorite place to eat in all of Pampa. Same yellow Formica. Same red stools. And somewhere along it, one of the great American songwriters used to sit down for lunch. Ninety years on, they'll still pour you a coffee and slide you a chili dog in a room Woody Guthrie loved.

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Pampa's Tribute to Woody Guthrie and the 'This Land Is Your Land' sculpture RoadyGoat

Woody Guthrie wrote "This Land Is Your Land," and Pampa, Texas, decided that song deserved a monument. Back in nineteen ninety-two, when the city leaders wouldn't back a tribute, two women — Thelma Bray and Glenna Lea Miller — went and built one anyway, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Guthrie's death. Governor Ann Richards proclaimed a Woody Guthrie Day across Texas. His own sister came and spoke, and a hundred Pampa schoolkids stood up and sang his songs. And a welder named Rusty Neef took carbon steel and forged the actual notes of "This Land Is Your Land" into a sculpture — a hundred and forty-two feet of melody laid out in East Coronado Park. It used to glow at night off the highway, till vandals smashed the floodlights. The song's still out there. It never needed the lights.

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Woody Guthrie Folk Music Center RoadyGoat

2003

Woody Guthrie learned to play guitar in Pampa, Texas — up in the Panhandle — while he was working the soda fountain at the Harris Drug Store. That building's still standing at 320 South Cuyler Street, and it's a museum now: the Woody Guthrie Folk Music Center. Funny thing is, the building itself is about the only Guthrie artifact in it. The real treasures are on loan from his daughter Nora — photos, letters, lyrics, paintings. A woman named Thelma Bray got the museum open to the public back in 2003, with Pete Seeger playing a benefit concert to fund the restoration. Thelma just turned a hundred years old this past June. And every Friday night, folks still bring their instruments down and pick together in the room where Woody figured it out.

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Woody Guthrie's years in Pampa RoadyGoat

Before he was the voice of the Dust Bowl, Woody Guthrie was a teenager in a Panhandle oil town. His father called him to Pampa at seventeen to help run a cot house for roughnecks on Cuyler Street. He dropped out of high school and taught himself at the public library — twelve books at a time. He claimed a guitar somebody had abandoned in the storeroom of Harris Drug, and his uncle Jeff, a fiddle-playing deputy, showed him the chords. He wrote his first songs here and married a local girl. Then, April fourteenth, 1935, the sky went black with topsoil. In the exodus that followed, Guthrie wrote "So Long, It's Been Good to Know You," and lit out for California. His records would go on to inspire a whole folk revival — Seeger, Dylan, all of them — a couple of decades down the road.

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History of Pampa

Pampa, TX RoadyGoat

On June 8, 1995, Pampa experienced a violent tornado that hit the industrial section on the west side of the city. The tornado destroyed or damaged about 250 businesses and homes, resulting in $30 million in damage. It was the costliest and most destructive tornado on record for Pampa, with a three-mile-long path and 200 yards wide, and was rated an F4 on the Fujita scale at its peak.

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Pampa, TX RoadyGoat

Pampa sits high on the plains, a place where you can almost taste the bluestem grass on the wind. It's a town built on the land and what comes out of it – agriculture, of course, and the oil that boomed here in the '20s. But beyond the economics, Pampa’s produced some true originals.

Pampa, TX RoadyGoat

Pampa's history is marked by significant events that shaped the city. In 1888, the Santa Fe Railroad was constructed through the area, leading to the establishment of a rail station and telegraph office. The town, initially called Glasgow and then Sutton, was eventually named Pampa after the pampas grasslands of South America. Pampa became a center for agriculture, and its prosperity surged with the discovery of gas and oil in the Texas Panhandle in 1916. The Gray County seat was moved from Lefors to Pampa in 1928. During World War II, the Army Air Forces Training Command operated the Pampa Army Air Field from 1942 to 1945. A devastating tornado in 1995 caused $30 million in damage, making it the costliest and most destructive tornado on record for Pampa.

Black Sunday Dust Storm

1935

Massive dust storm that rolled across the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma on April 14, 1935, blotting out the sun and depositing more dirt than was excavated to build the Panama Canal.

Vittorio Emanuel von Brunow, M. D.

1903

(October 27, 1862 - May 7, 1941) Born in North Carolina, Vittorio von Brunow moved to east Prussia with his family in 1864 and as a young man was educated in Vienna and Warsaw. He returned to the United States in 1892 to pursue his interests in research and technology, arriving in Texas in 1900 and in Pampa three years later. Von Brunow erected a frame house on this site from which he operated a drugstore and post and telephone offices in addition to his medical practice. As the area's first doctor, he often traveled many miles over dirt roads to care for his patients. Von Brunow also was active in community affairs and civic organizations for many years. (1998)

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Woody Guthrie

1929

American folk musician Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie (1912-1967) moved to Pampa from his native Oklahoma at age 17. Here he learned to play the guitar and joined with other musicians to perform for area events. Guthrie briefly attended Pampa High School and, from 1930 until 1935, worked as a soda jerk at this site, home of the former Harris Drug Store. He also spent much time reading books in the Pampa city library, preparing him for his most productive years as a poet-lyricist and folk balladeer during the 1940s and early 1950s. He left Pampa for California in 1937 and in 1940 went to New York City, where he was recognized for his writings and performances. He died there in 1967. 						(2002)

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German Sisters

1874

The four German (Germain[e]) sisters, Indian Captives , were the daughters of John and Lydia (Cox) German, who in the 1850s established a farm near Morganton, Fannin County, Georgia. They were Catherine E. (b. March 21, 1857), Sophia L. (b. August 11, 1862), Julia Arminda (b. March 23, 1867), and Nancy Adelaide (Addie, b. April 26, 1869). During the Civil War German fought for the Confederacy and was taken prisoner. He returned in 1865 to find his farm devastated and decided to make a new life for his family, which grew to seven children. Encouraged by a letter from a friend, the family set out for Colorado on April 10, 1870. Eventually they made it to Howell County, Missouri, where they stayed among relatives for over two years before moving on. In Elgin County, Kansas, German and his eighteen-year-old son, Stephen, plowed fields for pay on the Osage Indian Reservation for ten months before moving on. In August 1874 the family reached Ellis City, where they were advised to take the stage route up the Smoky Hill River to Fort Wallace, since water was more readily available that way. On September 10 the Germans camped on the trail a day's journey from the fort. The next morning as they were breaking camp they were attacked by a war party of Cheyennes led by Chief Medicine Water. John and Lydia German, their son Stephen, and daughters Rebecca Jane and Joanna were killed and scalped. The Indians then took any goods they deemed usable and set the wagon afire. Captured and eventually taken into the Texas Panhandle were Catherine, age seventeen; Sophia, twelve; Julia, seven; and Addie, five. The Germans were victims of the Cheyennes' retaliation for their losses at the second battle of Adobe Walls on June 27. After a scouting party from Fort Wallace came upon the scene of the massacre a few days later, the military campaigns against hostile Indians in the Panhandle were intensified. In the meantime, the German girls were subjected to exposure, malnutrition, and occasional maltreatment as their captors traveled southward. Catherine, in particular, recalled instances of gang rape by young "dog soldiers" and indignities at the hands of Cheyenne women, particularly Medicine Water's obnoxious wife, Mochi (Buffalo Calf Woman). Eventually Julia and Addie were traded to Grey Beard 's band, who for the most part neglected them. Grey Beard steered his following down the east side of the Llano Estacado , while Medicine Water joined with other groups and moved down the west side, probably crossing at several points into eastern New Mexico. By November 1874 Grey Beard had set up camp north of McClellan Creek, about ten miles south of the site of present-day Pampa. On the morning of November 8, Lt. Frank D. Baldwin 's column charged the Indian encampment. So complete was the surprise that the Cheyennes abandoned the village and left most of their property intact. Riding through the deserted camp, William (Billy) Dixon and other army scouts noticed movement in a pile of buffalo hides; they were astonished to find Julia and Addie German, both emaciated and near starvation. Dixon later recalled how hardened scouts and soldiers turned aside to hide their emotions as the little girls sobbed out their story. At the main supply camp on the Washita River Col. Nelson A. Miles placed Julia and Addie in the care of an army surgeon, who took them to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In January Miles and Col. Thomas H. Neill sent out friendly Kiowas as messengers to find the Cheyennes and induce them to surrender. The Kiowas located the camp of Stone Calf on a tributary of the Pecos River near the New Mexico border. When Stone Calf, who was bringing his people back from exile in Mexico, was told that peace was dependent upon the safety of Catherine and Sophia German, he had them moved into a lodge next to his own. They were released in March, after Stone Calf, Grey Beard, Red Moon, and other chiefs brought in their bands to surrender at Brinton Darlington's agency. T

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Panhandle Field

1918

Panhandle field is a giant gas and oil producing area that draws production from several horizons of Pennsylvanian and Permian age granite wash and dolomite, covering 200,000 surface acres in Hartley, Potter, Moore, Hutchinson, Carson, Gray, Wheeler, and Collingsworth counties of the Panhandle . The field was classified as one reservoir by the Railroad Commission of Texas until January 1, 1940, when cumulative production totaled 346.8 million barrels of oil. At that time oil production from the reservoir was separated into fields named Panhandle Carson County, Panhandle Gray County, Panhandle Hutchinson County, and Panhandle Wheeler County. The primary recovery of oil from the reservoir was driven by solution gas and gas-cap expansion and reservoir pressure has been maintained by gas and water injection. Secondary recovery attempts in the oilfield were begun with water flooding in 1946, but results were mixed. The vast gas reservoir, known as Panhandle Hugoton field, flanks the areas of oil production and is centered around the city of Pampa in Gray County. By 1994 the oilfields of the Panhandle district had yielded a cumulative total of nearly 1.42 billion barrels of oil and between 1973 and 1993 dry gas production was 8.1 trillion cubic feet. Oil was first found in the Osborne area of Wheeler County in 1910. Called Panhandle Osborne field, the area gave up nearly 6 million barrels of oil before the Railroad Commission consolidated it with Panhandle Wheeler field on May 1, 1989. However, it was in Potter County, three counties to the west, that exploration resulted in the discovery of the nation's largest natural gas reserve. In 1916 Amarillo Oil Company, a locally funded venture, hired Charles N. Gould to study the Amarillo fold for petroleum exploration. Gould was a University of Oklahoma geology professor who had first mapped the area for a water study beginning in 1904. The area that Gould and his associate, Robert S. Dewey, studied and mapped for Amarillo Oil was located on either side of the Canadian River on two large ranches in northern Potter County, belonging to R. B. Masterson north of the river and to Lee Bivins south of it. When Gould and Dewey completed the study, they mapped a prominent structure that was ten to fifteen miles in diameter and exhibited 400 feet of uplift. Gould and Dewey named the structure John Ray dome for the nearby butte. Amarillo Oil was so impressed with the map and the salient anticline that the company leased 64,000 acres and spudded the No. 1 Masterson on John Ray dome in Masterson's high prairie, 225 miles from known production. The well was completed on December 9, 1918 to a total depth of 2,269 feet where 10 million cubic feet of gas were produced daily. In 1919 three additional wells were completed in the Masterson high prairie, and all four were tested on an open-flow gauge in March 1920, where they yielded 160 million cubic feet of gas a day. When other strong wells were brought in on locations several miles apart in the ever-widening field, it was obvious that the subsurface of the Panhandle held enormous natural gas reserves. Engineers have estimated that those reserves numbered 15 to 25 trillion cubic feet of natural gas at discovery. This major gas discovery in a then-isolated section of the state captured the interest of major and independent oil companies, although they questioned the economic significance of even a giant field that had no market for production and no transportation system. Oilmen doubted that the reservoir would produce crude, the only form of hydrocarbons they sought. However, explorationists could neither deny nor ignore the possibilities of the discovery and they began leasing large blocks. On May 5, 1921 the Gulf Production Company No. 2 S. B. Burnett in Carson County reached a total depth of 3,052 feet and gave up 190 barrels of oil a day. The well was shut in after pumping 1,000 barrels of oil because there was no way to store it or move it to refiner

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Brown, Montague Kingsmill

1903

Montague Kingsmill Brown, cattleman, entrepreneur, and civic leader in Pampa, was born on May 22, 1878, near London, England. His father was a broker with the London Stock Exchange and, as Brown later quipped, "went broker, by Jove!" After leaving school at the age of fifteen, Brown worked in a lumber company and bank, starting at two dollars a week. When the Boer War broke out in 1899 he enlisted in the British army and saw action in South Africa, where he worked his way up from trooper to regimental sergeant major. After the war he considered returning to Africa to make his fortune. However, in 1902 Brown's uncle Andrew Kingsmill, manager of Lord Rosebery's London bank, was sent by his employer to investigate the property of the White Deer Lands ( see FRANCKLYN LAND AND CATTLE COMPANY ) in the Panhandle of Texas. On returning to England, Kingsmill persuaded his nephew to go to Texas and work for the syndicate. Accordingly, Brown arrived on April 27, 1903, at the boxcar depot and the two or three stores that composed the new rail town of Pampa. He entered the employ of the White Deer Lands, then managed by George Tyng . When Timothy Dwight Hobart succeeded Tyng as manager in 1903, Brown ably assisted him in promoting and surveying the lands being sold to small ranchers and farmers. In all, Brown helped dispose of some 600,000 acres. Over the years he successfully branched out into cattle raising, railroads, and later into oil. Impressed with the Panhandle environment, he obtained his naturalization papers in 1914 and in 1922 married Josye Barnes, a native of Oklahoma. After Hobart resigned as manager of the White Deer Lands in 1924, Brown and C. V. P. Buckler were appointed comanagers of the properties. Brown retired from that position in 1935 but continued to build up his fortune through investments in various businesses. In 1957, when the White Deer Corporation was liquidated, Brown bought the remaining properties with a $70,000 bid. As a civic leader he devoted his efforts to promoting Pampa as a townsite. He played the drums in Alex Schneider's band, since that was "the only instrument he could play and talk at the same time." He preached the town's first funeral rites, using his Anglican prayer book, and was mayor of Pampa when the town became the Gray county seat in 1928. Brown also served on the school board for sixteen years, was president of the Rotary Club, helped organize the country club, and was a senior warden of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church. In addition, he was a director of Pampa's First National Bank and Southwestern Investment Company and was president of the Security Federal Savings and Loan Association. Brown was a Scottish Rite Mason, generously supported both the Boy and Girl Scouts, and also chaired the Gray County selective service board for six years. Along with C. P. Buckler and Walter Purviance, he was appointed a trustee for the Lovett Estate. In 1952 Brown served as program chairman for the county's fiftieth anniversary celebration. In addition, he was a vice president of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society and with Buckler was instrumental in donating the White Deer Land Company records to the Panhandle-Plains Museum in Canyon. Among his many honors, Brown was named man of the year by the Pampa Chamber of Commerce in 1958 and adult leader of the year by the city's Key Club in 1963. In January 1964 he was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree by Incarnate Word College in San Antonio. He sponsored the M. K. Brown Range Life series of historical books, published by the University of Texas Press . Brown was robust and was said to have "a ready laugh and a story to tell." He contributed much of his fortune to Pampa's businesses and cultural advancements and helped send many young people through college. On September 10, 1964, he died from injuries received in a car collision in Pampa. Portions of his huge bequest were used to construct the M. K. Brown Memorial Civic Auditorium and to renovat

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Things to Do in Pampa

quirky 24.4 mi away
Leaning Tower of Texas (Britten)

A 75-foot water tower tilted on purpose so motorists think it's about to topple — a 1980s stunt that lured Route 66 drivers into Ralph Britten's truck stop.…
historical
Pampa, Texas (c. 1936)
quirky 0.9 mi away
Woody Guthrie Music Fence

A 142-foot-long carbon-steel fence forged in 1992 by welder Rusty Neef spells out the opening notes of Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land and the notes are…

Everything Near Pampa

83 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

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