DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just the one riding along with the story. Back in 1912, a man named C. W.
Post — yes, the cereal magnate, that C. W. Post — had this stretch of West Texas surveyed and platted.
He called it Hockley City. Now, there wasn't much to it. The marker doesn't mince words: it was a barren townsite.
Just flat, open, wind-scoured prairie with a name and a grid on paper. And yet — and here's where it gets good — that barren townsite won the race for county seat in 1921. Beat out whoever else was in the running, dirt lot and all.
The first meeting of county officers didn't happen in any grand hall. It happened in a Cadillac automobile, parked right there at the site where a courthouse would eventually stand. Picture that — the official business of Hockley County, conducted in a car on an empty plain.
From there, things got incrementally more dignified. The city square got itself a temporary courthouse, sixteen by thirty-two feet — not exactly the Capitol dome, but it was standing. They dug a well.
And somebody, with the optimism only a Texan can muster in that kind of country, planted a community black-eyed pea patch. In 1922, when the post office finally opened its doors, the city got a new name too — Levelland, named for exactly what you see when you look in every direction: level land. No mystery there, just honest topography.
The railroad came through in 1925, and prosperity started taking the place seriously. Then in 1937, oil was discovered in the county, and Levelland's future got a whole lot more interesting than a shared pea patch. From barren plat to county seat to oil country — not bad for a townsite that started its official life in the back of a Cadillac.
What the marker says
Surveyed and platted in 1912 as "Hockley City" by cereal magnate C. W. Post. Although only a barren townsite, place won race for county seat in 1921. The first meeting of county officers was held at future courthouse site-- in a Cadillac automobile. Soon city square boasted a temporary courthouse (16 by 32 feet), a well, and a community black-eyed pea patch. When a post office opened, in 1922, city was renamed Levelland, for its topography. Prosperity arrived with the coming of the railroad in 1925 and discovery of oil in the county in 1937. (1972)