DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, out here on the South Plains, where the land runs flat and wide in every direction and a man can see his own future walking toward him from three miles off, the thing people noticed first — the thing that stopped them in their tracks — was trees. Twin hackberry groves, right here at this site.
The marker calls them the most significant trees on the South Plains in the early days, and out here, friend, that is not a small thing to say. This spot sat on a trail that buffalo hunters knew, that surveyors walked, that law officers rode, and that early settlers followed like a thread through a needle. For all that traffic, the land itself stayed unappropriated — sitting on the public domain, unclaimed — until the mid-1880s, when a sheep rancher by the name of Zachary Taylor Maxwell staked a quarter section claim right here.
Maxwell, born in 1848, would live all the way to 1935 — long enough to watch everything he helped start grow into something real. Maxwell had a friend. A former Arkansas legislator named Edwin L.
Lowe, who claimed the adjacent one hundred and sixty acres. Now, these two men looked at this flat, windswept stretch of the South Plains and saw something most folks would've laughed at. They brought in a surveyor — R.
P. Smyth — and had him plat a public square, half carved from Maxwell's land, half from Lowe's. A town square.
Right here. On what had been nothing but open range and hackberry trees. And laugh is exactly what some ranchers did.
One of them, with the full confidence of a man who expects to be right, said he would eat everything ever built here. Now, I love that man for his honesty, because that is exactly the kind of thing you say right before history makes a fool of you. Because claims started coming in.
Families arrived — the Bryans, the Burches, the Carters, Horace Griffin, Thornton Jones, Hugh McClelland, C. W. Marsalis, John Pendley, Poliet Smith, the Smylies.
Jones opened a store. And on March 18, 1887, Edwin L. Lowe — the man who'd looked at hackberry trees and imagined a town — named that town and became its first postmaster.
Then in 1888, when Hale County was organized, Plainview did exactly what its founders had dreamed it would do: it became the county seat. The marker says it plainly — Plainview fulfilled the dreams of its founders. Not every town gets to do that.
Lowe didn't live long enough to see much more of it. He died July 13, 1889. Maxwell moved away in 1892.
But the pioneers kept coming. They saw those green trees. They saw the rich land.
And they stayed. Other men stepped up to bring in railroads, highway connections, trade, commerce, lasting institutions. All of it, every bit of it, traces back to this spot.
Twin hackberry groves on a trail that hunters and surveyors and settlers already knew. And one rancher who's been eating crow ever since 1887.
What the marker says
At this site in early days stood the South Plains' most significant trees-- twin hackberry groves, on 1870s trail used by buffalo hunters, surveyors, law officers, and early settlers. On public domain, this site was unappropriated until mid-1880s when Zachary Taylor Maxwell (1848-1935), a sheep rancher, staked a quarter section claim here. Former Arkansas legislator Edwin L. Lowe, his friend, claimed adjacent 160 acres. They had surveyor R. P. Smyth plat public square half from Maxwell's land, half from Lowe's. Ranchers scoffed; one said he would eat everything ever built here. But claims were staked by others, including families of J. H. Bryan, J. C. Burch, J. M. Carter, Horace Griffin, Thornton Jones, Hugh McClelland, C. W. Marsalis, John Pendley, Poliet Smith, and J. W. Smylie. Jones opened a store. Lowe named town and became first postmaster on March 18, 1887. When Hale County was organized in 1888, Plainview fulfilled dreams of its founders by becoming county seat. Lowe died July 13, 1889; Maxwell moved away, 1892. Pioneers continued to arrive, see the green trees and rich land, and settle nearby. Other men led city to obtain railroad and highway connections, develop trade and commerce and build enduring institutions. 1972