Hemphill County, Texas

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]
Surnames/tags: hemphill_county, texas us_history

Welcome to Hemphill County, Texas Project!

• Texas Space Page
• The leader of this project is: Mary Richardson.

Contents 1 History/Timeline= 1.1 Government Offices 1.2 Geography 1.2.1 Adjacent counties 1.2.2 Protected areas 1.3 Demographics 1.3.1 Cities/Towns 1.4 Formed From 1.4.1 Resources 1.5 Census 1.5.1 Notables 1.5.2 Cemeteries 1.6 Sources

History/Timeline=

Canadian,Tx Dozer Sign.

• Hemphill County was formed from Bexar and Young districts in 1876 and organized in 1887. It is named for Republic of Texas Justice, John Hemphill.

1675 nomadic Indian tribes representing the Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, and others roamed the Panhandle following the huge buffalo herds.^[1]

1840- Josiah came through searching for an alternate route to California through Santa Fe, New Mexico, Josiah Gregg ^[1]

1845 -Captain Randolph B. Marcy (1845) surveyed trails that crossed Hemphill County, following the south bank of the Canadian River.^[1]

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1874–75 Red River War the United States Army attempted to force the Indians of the Southern Plains to move to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Two major battles took place in what would become Hemphill County: the Battle of Lyman’s Wagon Train and the Battle of Buffalo Wallow.^[1]

1870 open-range ranching began in Hemphill County even before the end of the buffalo.

April 12, 1879, Wheeler County became the first organized county in the Panhandle, with 14 other unorganized counties attached to it, one of which was Hemphill County.^[1]

Hogtown

1876 - Hemphill county formed with over fifty other counties in the Panhandle and Southern Panhandle Plains.Ranches were the primary settlers until the railroad arrived.^[1]

1875, A. G. Springer established a temporary ranch in the eastern part of the county, and a handful of other settlers followed in 1876 and 1877.^[2]

1887 - Railaoad gave rise to towns : Glazier, Canadian and Mendota in 1887. ^[1]

late 1870-sCresswell Ranch, headquartered in Roberts County, came to occupy much of western Hemphill County. ^[2]

1878 the Moody-Andrews Land and Cattle Company established its PO Ranch in the western and central sections of the county. ^[2]

1887 County was organized in 1887. Canadian was chosen as county seat. It is named for location on S side of Canadian River.^[1]

Settlement on N of river was Clear Creek AKA Hogtown)^[1]

Hogtown soon relocated to Canadian and the town of Canadian was chosen as the county seat.

Named for Texas Texas Supreme Court Justice John Hemphill who was present at the Council House Fight in San Antonio in 1840 John Hemphill was present at the Council House Fight in San Antonio in 1840 ^[1][2]

1842 -John Hemphill developed the state’s system of law.^[1]

1842 John Hemphill took part in the Somervell expedition in 1842. Hemphill was known as the “John Marshall of Texas” for the role he played in developing the state’s system of law.^[1]

1880 fourteen ranches with combined herds of about 9,600 cattle had been established in the county; the United States census found 149 people living there that year. ^[2]

1881 Rhodes and Aldridge Cattle Company established a large ranch in Hemphill County in :1883 - the Texas Land and Cattle Company established the Laurel Leaf Ranch in the eastern part of the county.^[2]

1886 terrible winter , spelled the end of the open range. ^[2]

1886, the Southern Kansas Railway Company, a Santa Fe subsidiary, began to build a rail line into the Panhandle of Texas. ^[1][2]

1887 E. P. Purcell and O. H. Nelson, laid out a 240-acre townsite for the soon to arrive Southern Kansas Railway. ^[2]The site, which was on the South bank of the Canadian River connected to the community of Hogtown (AKA Clear Creek) by a bridge that summer. Residents and businesses moved from Hogtown to be near the rails. ^[1]

1887 - A post office was granted and the town's first hotel - The Log Cabin opened its doors. ^[2]

July 4 1888 Canadian hosted the first annual Cowboys' Reunion rodeo - one of the first commercial rodeos in Texas. ^[1]

1890s saw a county covered with smaller, privately owned and fenced ranching operations in place of the unfenced, public-domain, free-range empire.^[2]

1900 the town was thriving due to its being a division point for the railroad. The town soon had cotton gins, grain elevators and even a private academy, as well as the usual businesses necessary to a vibrant town. It was estimated that the town once had as many as thirteen saloons.^[1]

1902 The Woman's Christian Temperance Union set up their own building - which also houses the city library. ^[1]

1907, Canadian was designated a division point by the Santa Fe, a factor which brought diversification to the previously ranching economy of the area.^[1]

1920's boundary dispute involving Hemphill Count. As a result, a United States Supreme Court decision in 1930 led to the relocation of the 100th meridian, the eastern border of the Panhandle, approximately 3,700 feet to the east. This strip, 132 miles long, expanded Lipscomb, Wheeler, Hemphill, Collingsworth, and Childress counties ^[2]

The Handbook of Texas acknowledges the names of early business pioneers as George and John J. Gerlach, Harvey E. Hoover, Edward H. Brainard, and Nahim Abraham, who immigrated from Lebanon. ^[1]

1930's crops were grown on 86,000 acres in Hemphill County. Meanwhile, the cattle industry remained vital to the local economy; in 1930 the agricultural census counted over 55,000 cattle.

Temple Lea Houston, Sam Houston's youngest (and most flamboyant) son once lived in 'Canadian before settling in what is now Oklahoma. ^[1]

mid 1950 Santa Fe influence would remain very strong until the mid-1950s when the railway moved its employees to Amarillo.^[1]

1950's The railroad, which had long since been absorbed by the Santa Fe - closed the roundhouse in the 1950s. This might have been a deathblow to a lesser town, but Canadian survived. ^[1]

1955 -oil was discovered in the county in 1955, production remained relatively small because the technology had not yet progressed to efficiently capture the very deep reserves known to exist^[1]

1970s, the county grew due to a rapid expansion of oil production. ^[1]

1974, oil production had reached 999,000 barrels (158,800 m3) and more than 1,891,000 bbl (300,600 m3) in 1978. In 2000, about 505,000 bbl ^[2]

1980 - From the 1950 population of 2,600, county population grew to nearly 3,500 .

Hemphill County was roughly the midway point of two smaller lines, the Clinton, Oklahoma, and Western Railroad Company and the Clinton-Oklahoma-Western Railroad Company of Texas, which by the late 1920s, collectively linked Clinton, Oklahoma, with Pampa, Texas.^[1]

1980 cultivated land in the county amounted to only 50,000 acres. ^[2]

Government Offices

Hemphill County has had two courthouses:1887 and 1909 ^[3]

1st Courthouse, 1887 - Hemphill County’s first courthouse was constructed in Canadian in 1887 and used for over twenty years. ^[3]

1890, a Wisconsin born architect from St. Louis, Robert G. Kirsch, designed a two-story red brick jail in Canadian, the first permanent public building in the county. It was used as a jail until 1982 and still stands behind the current courthouse.^[3]

2nd Hemphill courthouse, 1909 is still being used. This was built of red brick in a Classical style with Italianate influences. A central tower framed by brick pilasters looms over the front entrance, topped by bulls-eye windows, brackets, broken pediments with modillions and a small, silver dome. The building’s red brick is also accented by corbelling on the lower floors and by white limestone around the windows, around the front entrance and in the keystones over the top floor windows. The original cost of constructing this courthouse was $31,278.^[3]

1909 courthouse.

1964, a renovation replaced the original windows and doors with metal ones and a new jail was built and attached to the rear of the courthouse in 1982 using a similar color of red brick.^[3]

Geography

Latitude/Longitude: 35°50' north latitude and 100°15' west longitude. ^[2]

Canadian, the county seat, is 8-10 NW center of the county and about 120 miles NE of Amarillo. ^[2]

Named for: named for John Hemphill. ^[2]

Size 904 sq mi of rolling plains and rugged terrain, broken by two major rivers and dozens of creeks. ^[2]

Rivers/Creeks - Canadian River flows easterly across the N -central part of the county, and the Washita River flows west to east across the S part. Red Deer Creek is the major tributary of the Canadian, Gageby Creek is the largest county tributary of the Washita. Over 3 dozen smaller creeks drain into the rivers.^[2]

Elevation 2,200 to 2,800 feet above sea level. ^[2]

Soil - clay loam, sandy loam, and alluvial soils support a variety of native grasses as well as wheat, grain sorghum, hay, and other cultivated grass crops, cottonwood and elm trees can be found in the numerous creekbottoms. ^[2]

Minerals - Oil and natural gas also contribute to the local economy; oil production in 2000 was more than 505,000 barrels. ^[2]

Rainfall: 20.5 inches^[2]

Growing season 204 days a year^[2] Temperature is 95° F in July, and minimum is 23° in January.^[2]

Canadian, Tx Wagon Bridge

Politics - voters of Hemphill County supported Democratic presidential candidates in almost every election from 1888 to 1948; during that period the Republicans took the county only in 1928, when a majority of local voters supported Herbert Hoover. In presidential elections between 1952 and 2004, however, county voters consistently supported Republican candidates. The only Democrat to win in the county during that period was Lyndon B. Johnson, who defeated Barry Goldwater in 1964. ^[2]

Adjacent counties

Lipscomb County (north)

Ellis County, Oklahoma (northeast)

Roger Mills County, Oklahoma (southeast)

Wheeler County (south)

Roberts County (west)

Gray County (southwest)

Protected areas

• Black Kettle National Grassland

Demographics

As of the census of 2000, 3,351 people, 1,280 households, and 948 families giving a population density of 4 people/sq mi per. TheThe racial makeup of the county was 87.65% White, 1.55% Black or African American, 0.72% Native American, 0.27% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 8.48% from other races, and 1.31% from two or more races. About 15.6% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.^[1]

The median income for a household in the county was $35,456, and for a family was $42,036. Males had a median income of $31,154 versus $19,423 for females. The per capita income for the county was $16,929. About 10.90% of families and 12.60% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16.70% of those under age 18 and 12.80% of those age 65 or over.^[1]

Highways:

• U.S. Highway 60
• U.S. Highway 83
• Texas State Highway 33

Hemphill county jail, Canadian, Tx

Cities/Towns

• Canadian (county seat)

• Glazier
• Gem

Formed From

• Young and Bexar territories.

Resources

• • Black Kettle National Grassland

Census

1880 --- 149 —

1890 --- 519 248.3%

1900 --- 815 57.0%

1910 --- 3,170 289.0%

1920 --- 4,280 35.0%

1930 --- 4,637 8.3%

1940 --- 4,170 −10.1%

1950 --- 4,123 −1.1%

1960 --- 3,185 −22.8%

1970 --- 3,084 −3.2%

1980 --- 5,304 72.0%

1990 --- 3,720 −29.9%

2000 --- 3,351 −9.9%

2010 --- 3,807 13.6%

Est. 2015 --- 4,264

Notables

Cemeteries

• Edith Ford Memorial Cemeteries
• Eller Flat Cemetery

• Hemphill CemeteriesGloria Mayfield
• FindaGrave
• Hemphill Cemetery Association

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.24 1.25 1.26} https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemphill_County,_Texas
2. ↑ ^{2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 2.19 2.20 2.21 2.22 2.23 2.24 2.25} https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hch12
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4} http://www.texasescapes.com/TOWNS/Canadian_Texas/Canadian-Texas-Hemphill-County-Courthouse.htm#1909