Pampa

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Way out on the Texas Panhandle, a place called Pampa didn't just appear on the map all at once. It took a few tries, a few names, and a whole lot of patience.

Back in 1888, a telegraph station went up along the Southern Kansas Railroad, and they called it Glasgow. That didn't stick. A year later, somebody decided Glasgow wasn't quite right, and the place got renamed Sutton.

That didn't stick either. A post office came along in 1892, and it was George Tyng, manager of the White Deer Land Company, who finally gave the town the name that stayed. Pampa.

Tyng wouldn't live to see everything that name would come to mean. He passed in 1906. But the name held.

Then in 1902, a surveyor by the name of A. H. Doucette came through and actually laid the town out in a proper fashion.

Gave it shape. Streets, lots, the geometry of a real place. The first school opened in 1903, and the first church was organized in 1906, which tells you something about how a community decides what it needs and in what order.

By 1912, Pampa had grown enough to need a mayor, and J. N. Duncan stepped into that role, becoming the town's first.

Now, here's where the story takes a turn that most Panhandle towns would envy. The 1920s brought an oil boom. And when the oil came, everything shifted, including the county seat itself, which moved from Lefors to Pampa in 1928.

Glasgow, Sutton, Pampa. Three names, one stubborn little place that just kept growing until the whole county had to take notice.

What the marker says

In 1888 a telegraph station on the Southern Kansas Railroad developed here, and was named Glasgow. Renamed Sutton a year later, a post office was established in 1892 and the town was named Pampa by George Tyng (d. 1906), manager of the White Deer Land Company. Surveyor A. H. Doucette (1884-1964) laid out the town in 1902. The first school opened in 1903 and the first church was organized in 1906. J. N. Duncan (1858-1941) became Pampa's first mayor in 1912. Following a 1920s oil boom, the county seat was moved here from Lefors in 1928.