Gaines County

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight with a little flair. Gaines County. Out here on the South Plains, that name carries some weight, and it ought to.

The county was named for James L. Gaines, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. That's not a small thing.

The man put his name on the document that changed everything, and out of that legacy came a county carved from Bexar County in 1876. Now, 1876 is when the county was formed on paper. But the land had its own timeline.

Anglo settlement of the area didn't begin until about 1895, nearly two decades after the county lines were drawn. The country was that remote, that quiet, that uncompromising. Then 1905 rolled around, and Gaines County was formally organized.

That same year, Seminole was established as the county seat. They didn't waste time either. By 1906, a courthouse was standing.

When you're claiming your place on the map, you build the courthouse first and ask questions later. For a good long while, ranching and farming were the most prominent and profitable occupations in the county. The land rewarded the patient and punished the careless.

That held true right up through the early nineteen thirties. Then came the mid-1930s, and everything shifted. Oil production eclipsed ranching and farming both.

Just like that, the calculus of this county changed. Today Gaines County encompasses one thousand four hundred and seventy-nine square miles, with Seminole and Seagraves standing as its two largest cities. Named for a man who helped birth a republic, built slow and built tough, and then one day the ground itself opened up and said, there's more here than you knew.

What the marker says

Named for James L. Gaines, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, this county was formed out of Bexar County in 1876. Anglo settlement of the area began about 1895, and the county was formally organized in 1905. Seminole was established as the county seat that year, and a courthouse was built in 1906. Ranching and farming were the most prominent and profitable occupations until the mid-1930s, when they were eclipsed by oil production. Gaines County encompasses 1,479 square miles, and Seminole and Seagraves are its two largest cities. (1989)