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Photo Courtesy of Texas Highways
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Welcome to Texas Genealogy
Trails!
*Volunteers dedicated
to putting free data online.*
Gray County Website is available for adoption.
If interested in joining our group, view our Volunteer
Information Page and contact
Kim.
[Basic webpage design
knowledge and a desire to transcribe data is required]
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This was one of the last of the Panhandle counties
to be organized, a county government
being instituted in 1902. The population of the county
in 1880 was 56; in 1890, 203; in 1900, 480; and in 1910, 3,405.
The Kansas Southern Division of the Santa Fe Railroad was constructed
across the northwest corner of the county during
the latter '80s, and in 1903 the Rock Island Line was built along the
southern border of the county. The county
seat is Lefors, in the center of the county,
while important railroad towns are Pampa,
Alan Reed and McLean. The last ten or fifteen years has witnessed
the introduction of the same changes in this section as in other parts
of the Panhandle. In the southern portion of the county
a considerable acreage of sub-irrigated land has been made to
produce alfalfa, wheat and other grain and forage crops, and gradually
the live stock industry has become secondary to diversified farming
along the railroads.
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Gray County, formed in 1876 out of the Bexar District, was named for
Peter W. Gray, a lawyer and politician of the Republic of Texas and
Civil War eras. The county's prehistoric Plains Apache inhabitants
gave way to the Apaches, who in turn were displaced by the Comanches and
Kiowas. These peoples dominated the Panhandle until they were crushed in
the Red River War of 1874 and removed to Indian Territory. With Gray
County for settlement, ranchers began to reach the region as early as
1877. In 1878 a well-known local rancher, Perry LeFors, established a
small ranch on Cantonment Creek. Other small ranching operations
developed in the eastern part of the county. In 1882 the Francklyn Land
and Cattle Company purchased a huge tract of land that included the
western part of Gray County. The company failed in 1886 and was
reorganized as the White Deer Lands , which operated the huge Diamond F
Ranch. For the rest of the nineteenth century Gray County remained the
domain of cattle ranchers.
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