Lorenzo

Duane's take

Here's the story as the marker tells it, straight from the official record out on the Crosby County plains. Now, some towns ease into existence. Lorenzo did not ease into anything.

It arrived all at once, with a whistle and a rumble and a cloud of dust, on April 10, 1911, the day the Crosbyton-South Plains Railway ran its very first train through that stretch of West Texas. Before that train, there was not much. After it, there was a town.

And every town needs a name. This one got its name from a man called Lorenzo Dow, an employee of the C. B.

Livestock Company. That company had a hand in more than cattle. They were the ones who promoted the town itself, nudging it along, encouraging it to grow.

Then in 1914, they did something that would shape the whole character of the place for generations. They encouraged the area to plant cotton. Now think about that for a moment.

A livestock company, pointing at the soil and saying, try something different. Whether that turned out to be vision or just good timing, the marker does not say. But the land listened.

By 1924, Lorenzo had grown enough to incorporate, which is the official way a place tells the world it intends to stick around. And stick around it did. Today Lorenzo stands as a center of cotton growing, with fine churches, a school, and the kind of businesses that hold a community together out where the horizon runs long and the wind means business.

One man's name on a railway stop, one company's nudge toward a new crop, and West Texas did the rest.

What the marker says

Founded when Crosbyton-South Plains Railway ran first train here, April 10, 1911. Named for Lorenzo Dow, employee of C. B. Livestock Company, which promoted the town, and in 1914 encouraged area to plant cotton. Incorporated in 1924. Now a center of cotton growing, with fine churches, school, businesses. 1966