Carson County Texas History and Genealogy - presented by Genealogy Trails

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.

In the later 1880s the railroads reached Carson County. By 1886 the Southern Kansas Railway, a subsidiary of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, had built from Kiowa, Kansas, to the Texas-Indian Territory border. The Southern Kansas of Texas Railway was formed to extend the line into Texas.

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.