Former Whiteface Hotel

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out on the South Plains of Cochran County, there stands a building that has been, in its time, quite a few things to quite a few people. The Former Whiteface Hotel.

Now, let me set the scene for you. The year is 1926. Cochran County is young, and a realtor by the name of Wm.

E. Flenniken decides to build something that nobody in that town has seen before. Brick.

An actual brick structure, the first one in town. You have to appreciate what that meant out here, where the wind comes at you sideways and the land stretches so flat you can watch a tumbleweed leave on a Tuesday and still see it Friday. Flenniken wasn't just building walls.

He was building a statement. The hotel had a job to do, and it did it well. When Cochran County was opened to sales of small tracts, the land shoppers came.

They needed somewhere to sleep, somewhere to gather their thoughts, somewhere to look out at all that West Texas sky and decide whether this flat, wide, stubborn country was the place they wanted to plant their lives. The Whiteface Hotel was that somewhere. It housed them.

It held them while they made up their minds. Now, a building like that accumulates a certain kind of history, quiet but deep. Then comes 1968, and the story takes a turn that you might not see coming.

The J. S. Noel estate gives the hotel to Girlstown, U.S.A.

Not sold. Given. For the use of the management.

That first brick building in town, the one that sheltered all those hopeful land shoppers on the edge of possibility, passed into the hands of something new. Some buildings outlast their first purpose and find a second one worth keeping. This one did exactly that.

What the marker says

Built 1926 by realtor Wm. E. Flenniken, this was first brick structure in town. It housed land shoppers when Cochran County was opened to sales of small tracts. Given 1968 to Girlstown, U.S.A., by J. S. Noel estate, for use of the management. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1969