Follett

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, some towns plant themselves in the ground and never budge. Follett is not one of those towns.

This little community up in Lipscomb County started out with a different name entirely, Ivanhoe, and it started out in a different state entirely, Oklahoma. That's right, before it was ever a Texas town, it was sitting just across the state line, going about its business. But Ivanhoe, soon to be Follett, had ambitions.

And those ambitions were tied to a railroad. The town moved. Not once, but twice, chasing that rail line until it finally landed right here in 1917.

When it settled in for good, it got a new name to go with its new home. They called it Follett, after Horace Follett, a railroad surveyor. There's a certain poetry in that, naming a town that followed a railroad for a man who helped chart where those railroads would go.

Now the marker calls this place a gateway to the Texas Panhandle's Golden Spread, and the economy that grew up around it has the weight of real Panhandle country behind it. Wheat. Cattle.

Grain sorghums. And come the 1950s, oil and gas production joined the mix. Two states, two moves, one railroad, and a surveyor's name on the map.

Follett didn't just find its place in Texas. It worked for it.

What the marker says

A gateway to Texas Panhandle's "Golden Spread". Founded as "Ivanhoe", on a site across state line, in Oklahoma. Town moved twice to locate on a railroad. Situated here in 1917, and renamed for Horace Follett, railroad surveyor. Economy based on wheat, cattle, grain sorghums and (since 1950's) oil and gas production. (1967)