Name: Wilson, Texas
Address: Wilson, TX

Wilson, TX RoadyGoat

The town was established in 1912, founded in anticipation of the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway laying tracks through the area. The railway company was a major subsidiary operating across Texas, including lines through the Panhandle and South Plains. A crucial branch line between Slaton Junction and Lamesa was constructed in 1911, passing directly through the future site of the city. Early settlers included German and Polish emigrant farmers who acquired property on former Wilson County School lands. This strategic location along the planned railway route and the availability of land were key factors in its formation.

Wilson, TX RoadyGoat

The specific location was chosen due to its anticipated role in the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway's expansion. A branch line, constructed in 1911, was routed to pass directly through the area, making it a prime spot for development. Early settlers, including German and Polish farmers, acquired land on former county school grounds, further solidifying the site. The town's establishment in 1912 was a direct result of this planned infrastructure and the availability of land for agriculturalists, positioning it as a hub along the developing railway network.

Circles of Green in a Dry Land RoadyGoat

As you drive around Wilson, look out at the fields. You might see giant metal sprinklers, some a quarter-mile long, slowly pivoting around a central point. These are center-pivot irrigation systems, and they are the machines that transformed the High Plains. This whole area sits on top of the Ogallala Aquifer, a massive underground reservoir of water. For decades, farming here was a gamble against the dry climate. But starting in the mid-20th century, farmers began drilling deep wells into the aquifer. Combined with the engineering of these irrigation rigs, they could create perfect circles of green corn, sorghum, and especially cotton, right in the middle of a semi-arid landscape. This technology turned Wilson into a cotton powerhouse. But it came at a cost. That aquifer water is a finite resource, pumped out much faster than nature can refill it. So, the very technology that built the modern farm economy here is also the source of its greatest challenge for the future.

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Spanish Explorers' Route

1629

A prehistoric road discovered and used by Indians, Spaniards, United States Army units, and cattle drovers. It crossed the Llano Estacado from Gholson Spring (7 mi. E. of present-day Slaton), to Tahoka Lake (3 mi. S. of Wilson), then to Tobacco Creek, Big Spring, and the North Concho. Here passed many 17th century Spanish visitors: Father Salas, coming from New Mexico in 1629 on pleas of Jumano Indians to preach to them; Captains Hernan Martin and Diego del Castillo, exploring in 1650; Captain Diego de Guadalajara, seeking pearls and other treasure, in 1654. Incise on back: Historian - Dr. W. C. Holden Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1967

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Site of Mackenzie Cavalry Camp

1874

At or near this spot, Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie, with two companies of United States 4th Cavalry, was overtaken on Dec. 4, 1874, by a snowstorm. Forced to spend the night here without wood or water, or grass for the horses, troops called this the most miserable night of their duty in the Southwest. Several horses froze to death. MacKenzie was hunting here for straggling Indians, during last weeks of 1874 campaign to confine tribes to reservations. On Dec. 5 his troops reached Tahoka Lake, where they found shelter under a cliff. (1967)

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Wilson Mercantile Company

1910

Founded 1910 by William Green, son of a family who settled in South Texas more than a century ago. The townsite was part of four leagues of Wilson County school lands bought 1906 by Green and Associates. Green later bought out his associates, and shortly thereafter he and Lonnie Lumsden acquired over 50 sections of the old Dixie Ranch in the north part of Lynn County. Their ranching headquarters were a mile east of here. Green introduced farming on the school lands, bringing in settlers (many from his home county, Lavaca)-- some as purchasers, some as tenants. The community was called Wilson, for the original tract, and indirectly for Rev. J. C. Wilson, State Senator for whom Wilson County was named. The town was founded 1911, after Green influenced Panhandle & Santa Fe Railway to put its line here. Green's original frame mercantile store, nucleus for the town, was replaced in 1917 by this building. In 1963 Wilson Mercantile was restored by Mrs. William Dickson Green, daughter-in-law of founder; her work has made the building a repository for items authentic to the period when the Greens came to Texas as well as to the era when town of Wilson was established and the store was founded. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1967

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Slaton, TX

1911

The site of Slaton, on U.S. Highway 84 fifteen miles southeast of Lubbock in southeastern Lubbock County, was originally part of a tract patented by Eli Stilson and J. I. Case on September 1, 1879. Case, who manufactured farm machinery, sold the property six years later to the Western Land and Livestock Company, which developed it into part of the firm's IOA Ranch . J. W. and Herbert L. Kokernot purchased the land in 1901, promoted settlement in the area, and later sold the property to J. C. Phillips. The community was founded when the Santa Fe Railroad sent W. B. Storey, Jr., from Chicago to establish a townsite as a division point to service trains. The company purchased the townsite on April 15, 1911, and designed its street pattern after the layout of Washington, D.C. The town officially opened on June 15, 1911; it was named in honor of rancher and banker O. L. Slaton, who promised to establish a bank. A post office was established by 1910, and the South Park addition was deeded to L. A. Wells and other developers in that year. At one time Slaton had four daily trains-a northbound and southbound train between Amarillo and Sweetwater, the Amarillo local, and the Lamesa local. It also had a Harvey House restaurant at the tracks. Slaton was the center of the largest division in the Santa Fe system. Santa Fe employees and their families moved there, and the population grew. Businesses included a cotton gin and mill and the Caps and Singleton hotels. The town incorporated on October 26, 1912. The weekly Slaton Journal was edited by E. W. Dickey beginning on June 15, 1911, and a school, established two miles west of the community in 1897, became the center of the Slaton Independent School District on March 9, 1912. By 1931 Slaton had 145 businesses and a population of 3,876; in 1949 it had 117 businesses and a population of 3,587. In the late 1960s the Santa Fe began shutting down operations at Slaton and moved offices to Lubbock, Amarillo, and New Mexico. Slaton lost both residents and retail trade, though a slow, steady growth continued through the 1960s. In 1970 the number of businesses was 155, and the population was 7,250. In 1988 the town had a population of 6,950 and ninety-two businesses. In the late 1980s Slaton had a strong agricultural economy that produced cotton and grain. St. Joseph's Church and School sponsored spring and fall sausage festivals, and the town airport held air shows and other events. A retired locomotive in the downtown center served as a reminder of the importance of railroading in Slaton's history. The population was 6,078 in 1990 and 6,109 in 2000.

Tsha Handbook → · 9.8 mi away

Balch, Arthur Chester [Ace Ball]

1922

Ace Ball, country musician, stage entertainer, and radio personality, was born Arthur Chester Balch in the New Home community of Lynn County, Texas, on January 13, 1922, the son of Chester Arthur and Eunice (DePriest) Balch. He was given a guitar at the age of eleven and set his sights on becoming a professional. After high school, he worked for a brief time as a land surveyor for Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University) in Lubbock, and in the closing months of World War II served in the United States Navy. Upon discharge, he worked with dance bands in New Mexico and West Texas. In 1952 Balch began what would become a decades-long career in radio, serving in various capacities as performer, announcer, deejay, and engineer. The following year, he signed a contract with OKeh Records, Columbia’s budget label, and was billed as “Ace Ball.” Although his contract with OKeh was not renewed after eight sides, he continued to record regularly for many independent labels in Nashville and elsewhere through the years, including Caprock Records out of Big Spring, Texas, and his own Ace-Hi Records. Like many other youngsters attempting to break into the recording business at the time, he faced stiff competition, and other musicians who knew him attributed the easy-going Balch’s failure to attract less than a national audience to the fact that he too readily deferred to what he thought record executives and show producers wanted, rather than pursuing his own unique style and selection of material. An even more detrimental factor was bad timing: Balch’s attempt to become a country music recording artist ran straight into the rising tide of rock-and-roll , which all but submerged country music for a time in the 1950s and early 1960s. In the meantime, however, Balch gained increasing popularity as a broadcaster. Between 1952 and the 1970s, he was heard on no fewer than eleven radio stations—stretching from Clovis, New Mexico, to Dayton, Ohio—while also performing on several television broadcasts. He made at least two appearances on the Grand Ole Opry , one segment of which included Carl Smith, George Morgan, Goldie Hill , and Grandpa Jones. He was also on the All-Star Country Roadshow , broadcast over WBAP , Fort Worth, became a regular on KFDA-TV’s Downtown Jamboree in Amarillo, and played some of the more prominent country shows across the nation, including Louisiana Hayride on KWKH, Shreveport; the West Coast’s premier Town Hall Party in Compton, California, which aired on KFI and KTTV-TV, Los Angeles; and Dallas’s Big D Jamboree and Saturday Night Shindig , both on WFAA , with a segment of the latter carried on the CBS radio network. As a deejay on Dave Stone ’s KDAV in Lubbock, considered the nation’s first full-time country station, he was instrumental in the careers of such locals as Waylon Jennings , Sonny Curtis, Buddy Holly , and Roy Orbison . One of the more fortuitous events in Balch’s life was his meeting with seventeen-year-old Dorothy Stark while he was working at KCLV in Clovis, New Mexico, in 1952. Stark had been singing and playing guitar since childhood and had already appeared on the Big D Jamboree , broadcast on WFAA in Dallas. Returning to her home in Clovis, she heard about a proposed stage show and called the radio station for information. She was referred to Balch, who told her the show was only a rumor but invited her to bring her guitar to the station and appear on his program. Consequently, she became a once-a-week feature on the show, and the two of them, clearly attracted, began to date occasionally. Stark’s father, however, was a deputy sheriff and quite strict; he frowned on the fourteen-year age difference between his daughter and her mentor. That situation seemed resolved when Stark’s family moved across the state to Deming, New Mexico. But the two maintained a long-distance romance until finally, on June 27, 1954, they were married. Soon, as “Ace and Dottie Ball,” they began a musical duo, a bus

Tsha Handbook → · 10.6 mi away

Ramsey, Kenneth Melvin [Buck]

1938

Kenneth Melvin Ramsey, cowboy poet and singer, was born on January 9, 1938, at New Home, Texas. He was the son of David Melvin and Pearl Lee (Williams) Ramsey. David Ramsey nicknamed his son Buckskin Tarbox when he was born, and he always went by the name of Buck. As a child, Ramsey attended a two-room schoolhouse in Middlewell, Texas. He came from a musical family and grew up singing four-part harmony in the Primitive Baptist Church. He also attended shape-note singing schools. Buck was born with perfect pitch. He sang in the school choirs, and his music teachers used him as their tuning fork all through his school days. By the time he was in high school, he was singing with a band called the Sandie Swingsters. Ramsey graduated from Amarillo High School in 1956 and entered Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University). He soon left school, traveled the United States, and worked in California and New York. In 1958 he returned to Texas and entered West Texas State College (now West Texas A&M University) at Canyon. During this time he started seriously cowboying and punched cattle around the Panhandle. He continued the cowboy life until the early 1960s, when injuries sustained in a riding accident left him paralyzed from the waist down and bound to a wheelchair. In the 1960s he worked as a newspaper reporter for the Amarillo Globe–News . He made an unsuccessful bid for the state legislature in the Democratic primary in 1974. Over the years Ramsey cultivated his talent as a poet and musician. Through his writings and music he chronicled cowboy culture and eventually garnered a national reputation for preserving the traditions and lore of the cowboy life. Ramsey began resurrecting the old ranching and trail songs, performing and recording his versions to catalog them for posterity, and critics and colleagues regarded his contemporary cowboy poetry as some of the best in that genre. His recordings of the traditional cowboy songs "Rolling Uphill from Texas" (1992) and "My Home It Was in Texas" (1994) each won Western Heritage Wrangler Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. In 1993 his epic poem, As I Rode Out on the Morning , was published by Texas Tech University Press. The prologue, "Anthem," was highly acclaimed. Ramsey's awards and achievements included a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1995, Lifetime Achievement and Best Poetry Book awards from the Academy of Western Artists in 1996, and the Golden Spur Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1997. His performances of cowboy poetry and songs were featured at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and at the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles. In the late 1990s Ramsey began recording more than 150 traditional cowboy songs in an effort to preserve them. He died in Amarillo on January 3, 1998. He was survived by Bette Cave Ramsey, his wife of thirty-five years, and a daughter. In 2002 the Academy of Western Artists named their annual poetry book award the Buck Ramsey Award in his honor. Hittin' the Trail , a two-CD set of Ramsey's recordings, was released by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings in 2003. This work won the 2004 Western Heritage Wrangler Award.

Tsha Handbook → · 10.6 mi away

Wilson, Texas

Music in Wilson

Songs About Wilson

Artists From Wilson

Rivers & Roads in Song near Wilson

History of Wilson

Wilson, TX RoadyGoat

Wilson, TX RoadyGoat

Circles of Green in a Dry Land RoadyGoat

Spanish Explorers' Route

Site of Mackenzie Cavalry Camp

Wilson Mercantile Company

Slaton, TX

Balch, Arthur Chester [Ace Ball]

Ramsey, Kenneth Melvin [Buck]

Things to Do in Wilson

Everything Near Wilson