Name: Turkey, Texas
Address: Turkey, TX

Hall County, TX RoadyGoat

The rolling plains of the Southwestern Tablelands define Hall County, a landscape of grasslands punctuated by breaks and canyons carved by the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River. This terrain, better suited to grazing than intensive cultivation, shaped its destiny as a ranching stronghold. While the promise of fertile soil drew early settlers, it was the open range that truly took root, defining the county's identity and economy. Today, visitors come seeking a glimpse of authentic Texas, a place where cattle still outnumber people and the rhythms of rural life prevail. Though farming has diversified the economy, locals will tell you that Hall County's spirit remains tied to the land and its legacy of independence. The draw isn't any single attraction, but the quiet strength of a community that has weathered droughts, booms, and busts, holding fast to its heritage.

Hall County, TX RoadyGoat

Hall County, a part of the Southwestern Tablelands ecoregion within the Texas Panhandle, is a land where agriculture shapes both the economy and the character of the people. The wide-open spaces, ideal for ranching and farming, stretch across the county, a testament to its enduring ties to the land. Yet, this seemingly quiet corner of Texas has also fostered individuals whose impact reached far beyond its borders.

Hall County, TX RoadyGoat

Hall County sits on the Southwestern Tablelands of the Texas Panhandle, a landscape where the prairie stretches wide under vast skies. Named for Warren D.C. Hall, a Secretary of War during the Republic of Texas era, the county’s story is interwoven with the land itself. Ranching took root early, shaping the culture and economy, as families worked to carve out a life from the open range. Later, farming emerged as another mainstay, transforming sections of the prairie into cultivated fields. The county has seen its share of change over the decades. While never a boomtown, Hall County has quietly persisted, its identity deeply tied to the cycles of agriculture.

Medicine Shows

1870

A number of Texas musicians received some of their earliest professional experience playing for the old-time traveling medicine shows, a popular form of American entertainment from roughly the 1870s to the television age. The list includes such artists as Bob Wills , Gene Autry , T-Bone Walker , Charline Arthur , Prince Albert Hunt , Cliff Bruner , and Cowboy Slim Rinehart . The shows were sometimes as small as a lone pitchman and a banjo player or guitarist. In a 1929 Saturday Evening Post reminiscence, medicine showman Nevada Ned Oliver wrote that the larger shows presented "full evenings of drama, vaudeville, musical comedy, Wild West shows, minstrels, magic, burlesque, dog and pony circuses, not to mention Punch and Judy, pantomime, movies, menageries, bands, parades, and pie-eating contests." According to Oliver Barnes, son of a champion fiddler/banjoist and medicine showman named Frank Barnes, a twenty-two-year-old Bob Wills bested Barnes in an impromptu fiddling contest in Wills's hometown of Turkey, Texas, before briefly joining the show on the road at $25 a week. At fifteen years of age Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker got a job playing music for one Doc Breeding when the doctor came through Walker's neighborhood in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas and sold his Big B Tonic (also called B and B Tonic), a concoction Walker later described as "black and evil-tasting." A shy fifteen-year-old named Orvon Autry joined the Fields Brothers Medicine Show when it played his hometown of Tioga, Texas, in 1923. In the 1930s, after morphing into the singing cowboy movie star Gene Autry, the Tiogan performed in fictional medicine shows in several of his Hollywood film roles. The father of fifteen-year-old Charline Arthur had to sign a legal release in order to let the future rockabilly queen travel with the Ray Smith Medicine Show when it came through Paris, Texas. Arthur's younger sister recalled decades later that Charline "looked like a star" on the tiny med-show stage. The Smith show was one of many selling the popular, alcohol-powered tonic Hadacol. Though the repertoire of most early touring medicine shows reflected music currently or recently popular back East, regional fare eventually found its way into medicine show playlists. When New Mexico cowboy musicologist N. Howard "Jack" Thorp made a song-collecting trip through Texas in 1889, he performed some of the tunes he discovered (some of which would later become Western classics) with a medicine show in Waco. As Thorp recalled in his book, Pardner of the Wind , he was carrying his banjo into a downtown Waco chili joint when a man grabbed his arm and explained that "Professor Scott, the Wizard Oil King, needed a man like me. His banjo-picker was drunk, and his show was due to open on the public square in a few minutes." The long-haired, long-winded professor "wore a scarlet coat and a huge sombrero," wrote Thorp. "Occasionally he would fondle a pet Gila monster that he carried around...and explain that among other mysterious powers he had a strange influence over dumb animals." Thorp played between medicine pitches and other bits, receiving $5 for a two-hour show. And he collected lyrics to the song "Buckskin Joe" from the fast-talking professor, who "recited this barroom surprise story with oratorical flourishes that would have astonished Shakespeare." Fiddle music was especially popular with Texas medicine show audiences. Eck Robertson , who grew up near Amarillo, and his occasional musical partner Henry Gilliland , the two fiddlers who, together, waxed the first commercial country recordings in New York in 1922, took to the medicine show circuit to refine their artistry on the instrument that some called the "Devil's Box." Robertson, who later had a long career as the colorful "Cowboy Fiddler," left his Panhandle home at age sixteen to tour the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) and developed his natural talent as a showman with pitches and trick fiddling. Henry Gilliland playe

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Turkey - Bob Wills Hometown

1905

Turkey, Texas is the hometown of Bob Wills, the King of Western Swing, who grew up picking cotton on the surrounding plains before revolutionizing American music.

Turkey, TX

1892

Turkey is at the intersection of State Highways 86 and 70, on the Burlington Northern line in the southwestern corner of Hall County. The community, probably first settled in the early 1890s, was initially called Turkey Roost, for the wild turkey roosts once found on nearby Turkey Creek. In 1892 a Methodist Episcopal congregation was organized at the home of W. M. Cooper. The town name was changed to Turkey in 1893, when a post office was established there in the dugout of Alfred P. Hall, the first postmaster. Later John M. Gist became the postmaster and served until 1895, when the post office was discontinued. In 1900 the Turkey post office was reopened, and by 1906 a school district had been established and a chapter of the Woodmen of the World had been organized. A town plat was officially recorded in 1907. By 1914 about 250 people were living in Turkey, which included a bank, a hotel, a general store, and two groceries. A newspaper, the Turkey Gobbler , began publishing in 1919. When Turkey incorporated in 1926, Jess Jenkin became the first mayor, and G. Katzkie and J. B. Miller were elected as aldermen. By 1927 the town had an estimated 600 residents, and that year a Missionary Baptist church was constructed. A fire department was organized in February 1928, after a disastrous fire destroyed most of the business district. The Fort Worth and Denver Railway built through the town later that year, and on November 20, the townspeople celebrated the arrival of the first locomotive. With the railroad, Turkey became an important shipping point for area farmers and ranchers, and by 1929 the town had two banks and about 1,000 residents. An Assembly of God church was built the next year. The Great Depression slowed growth during the 1930s. One bank closed in 1933, and the other in 1940; meanwhile, the population declined to about 975 by 1931 and to 930 by 1941. During the late 1940s or early 1950s the local economy revived, and by 1950 Turkey included fifty businesses and 998 residents. By 1955 about 1,005 people were living there, but the town began to decline again in the late 1950s. By 1958 only thirty-eight businesses were reported, and by 1961 the population of Turkey had dropped to 813. Only twenty businesses were operating in Turkey in 1972, when its population had fallen to 680. A 1981 map showed two schools and five churches in Turkey; in 1982 the town reported twenty-three businesses and 644 residents. By 1990, however, Turkey had only twelve businesses and 507 residents. In 2000 the population was 494.

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Turkey High School

1928

Turkey's school system acquired this land in 1928 for a $100,000 high school. Amarillo architect E. F. Rittenberry designed a brick structure with English Gothic details. Consolidation with several area schools caused an enrollment of 445 students in 1928, accommodated by eight classrooms, a gymnasium, and an auditorium. Classes ended in 1973 after consolidation with Quitaque schools. The Turkey High School building was preserved as a center for community offices and events. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark-1986

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First Methodist Church of Turkey

1891

The Rev. J. D. Terry and seven charter members organized the Elizabeth Methodist Episcopal Church, South, on September 8, 1891, at the home of W. M. & Elizabeth Cooper. Worship services were held in homes and in the nearby Wolf Flat Community Schoolhouse until 1907. In that year a frame sanctuary and parsonage were completed. After a 1928 tornado destroyed the church building, the members built a basement structure and worshiped there until 1948, when an above-ground addition was completed. The church continues to serve the community. (1991)

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Caprock Canyons State Park

1878

Home to the official Texas State Bison Herd, descendants of Charles Goodnight's original herd that saved the Southern Plains bison from extinction.

Natural Landmark → · 9.6 mi away

Turkey, Texas

Music in Turkey

Songs About Turkey

Artists From Turkey

History of Turkey

Hall County, TX RoadyGoat

Hall County, TX RoadyGoat

Hall County, TX RoadyGoat

Medicine Shows

Turkey - Bob Wills Hometown

Turkey, TX

Turkey High School

First Methodist Church of Turkey

Caprock Canyons State Park

Things to Do in Turkey

Everything Near Turkey