DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out here in Scurry County, there used to be a little farming community that doesn't appear on most maps anymore — a place called Wheat. And the story of how it came and went is the kind of thing that makes you appreciate just how stubborn and practical West Texas people have always been.
In the late 1880s, folks started settling in here, putting down roots in that flat, wide-open country. Small community, farming community — nothing flashy about it. Then came 1890, and with it two things worth remembering: the U.S.
Post Office opened, and the wheat crop that year was something to talk about. A bumper crop. The kind that makes a farmer stand at the edge of his field and feel, just for a moment, like everything is going to be alright.
That crop made such an impression that when it came time to give the new post office a name, well — Wheat it was. Two postmasters kept that post office running: Minerva Thomas and G. W.
McCall. The community also built itself a school, and being practical people, they made it do double duty as a church. Sat a half mile west, on the southeast corner of the adjoining section of land.
Wheat had stores, it had a gin, it had a school and a church under the same roof. It had a name born from a good harvest. And for a while, that was enough.
Then 1907 arrived, and with it the Roscoe, Snyder and Pacific Railroad. Now, a railroad doesn't ask permission, and it doesn't always come to you — sometimes it cuts a line through the country a little ways off and just dares you to stay put. The residents of Wheat looked at that railroad, looked at their stores and their gin, and made a decision.
They moved. Two stores and a gin, picked up and relocated to a newly surveyed townsite called Hermleigh, where the railroad ran and commerce could follow. Wheat didn't burn, didn't flood, didn't blow away.
It just... relocated itself, piece by piece, toward something bigger. That's the thing about a place like Wheat — it wasn't defeated. It was practical.
The name stayed behind. The people moved on.
What the marker says
Small farming community that grew up here in the late 1880s. Received its name because of a bumper wheat crop the year the U. S. Post Office opened --1890. Two postmasters served here: Minerva Thomas and G. W. McCall. A school, which doubled as a church, was built a half mile west on southeast corner of adjoining section of land. When Roscoe, Snyder & Pacific Railroad was built through the area in 1907, residents moved two stores and a gin to newly surveyed townsite of Hermleigh to have access to the railroad. (1972)