Former Office Site of Texas Land & Development Company

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight with a little West Texas air underneath it. Way out in Hale County, there's a site that once housed the offices of something called the Texas Land and Development Company, and friend, that outfit was something else entirely. Founded in 1912 by two men, J.W.

Grant and M.D. Henderson, who had the vision and the nerve to go knocking on doors clear out East and over in Europe, pulling in capital from people who'd never seen the Llano Estacado and probably couldn't find it on a map. What'd they do with all that money?

They went to work on sixty-five thousand acres, spread across Hale, Floyd, and Swisher counties. Sixty-five thousand acres. Let that number sit with you a moment.

That's not a farm. That's a kingdom. And they set about making it produce, using both irrigated and dryland farming methods, which the marker calls unique, and it means it.

Because of what the Texas Land and Development Company did out here, this stretch of the Texas Panhandle Plains became one of the most productive agricultural areas in all of America. Not just Texas. America.

Now behind any operation that size, there are people holding it together. Winfield Holbrook served as vice president and general manager. W.J.

Klinger handled the books as secretary-treasurer. D.D. Bowman and W.F.

Lowe worked as farm superintendents, the kind of men who know what the dirt smells like before rain and after. And on the staff, a woman named Mary L. Cox took it upon herself to write the local history.

Good thing somebody did. The company kept at it, kept those acres turning, all the way until 1956. Forty-four years of agricultural ambition anchored right here.

And now you know where it happened.

What the marker says

Unique agricultural pioneer. Founded in 1912 by J.W. Grant and M.D. Henderson, who obtained Eastern and European capital to develop 65,000 acres of Hale, Floyd and Swisher county lands. This area became one of the most productive in America, because of the irrigated and drylands farming methods used by T.L. & D., which operated until 1956. Winfield Holbrook was the vice president and general manager; W.J. Klinger, secretary-treasurer; D.D. Bowman and W.F. Lowe, farm superintendents. Mary L. Cox, of the staff, wrote local history. (1973)