| Ranchers appeared in Carson County in
the early 1880s. The JA Ranch of Charles Goodnight and
John G. Adair and the Turkey Track Ranch both grazed large ranges in Carson County by 1880. In 1882 Charles G.
Francklyn purchased 637,440 acres of railroad lands in Gray, Carson, Hutchinson, and Roberts counties, 281,000
of them in Carson County. The newly formed Francklyn Land and Cattle Company, with B. B. Groom as manager, attempted
to ranch and farm on a large scale, but failed. The lands of the Francklyn Company were sold to the White Deer
Lands Trust of British bondholders in 1886 and 1887. |
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Panhandle City, a temporary railhead,
was founded in 1887 in anticipation of the railroad line, which finally reached the town in 1888. The town grew,
and its occupants hoped that another rail line, the Fort Worth and Denver City, which was building from Fort Worth
across the Panhandle to Colorado, would pass through their city. As it happened, the Fort Worth and Denver City
missed Panhandle City by fourteen miles to the south, just touching the southwestern corner of the county. In 1889
the two lines were finally linked by a fourteen-mile span between Panhandle City and Washburn, a station on the
Fort Worth and Denver City.
By 1890 Carson
County had a rail network, and its first town, soon known simply as Panhandle. Water had to be brought to
Panhandle by railroad from the area of Miami in Roberts County, then carried in barrels on wagons to homesteads.
This problem hindered development until it was found that abundant underground water could be pumped to the surface
by windmills. That discovery, together with the selling
of White Deer lands to small ranchers and farmers in 1902, greatly increased the area's attractiveness. During
the next thirty years a modern agricultural economy emerged, based on the production of livestock, wheat, corn,
and grain sorghum.
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