Amarillo, Texas is way up there in the Panhandle, over 700 miles from my home in Brownsville. Nevertheless, I married a young lady from Amarillo. Visited there many times. Met her when I studied biology at Texas Tech in Lubbock.
The city was named for a nearby Playa lake but it wasn't pronounced the Spanish way. The LX Ranch took notice when the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad started building their way in 1887. The railroad bypassed Tascosa, the old Cowtown. A new city, soon named Amarillo, rapidly became a cattle shipping point. The town grew. Hotels, stores, a newspaper. Amarillo became the county seat of Potter County, Texas. All was well.
Yet the owner of the competitive Frying Pan Ranch pointed out that the town was built on low ground, subject to flooding. And sure enough, a rare rainstorm did flood the town. Residents picked up and moved to the east. Stores followed; Amarillo was on the move. The new 40-room Amarillo Hotel became a social center as the town drifted eastward. The depot and courthouse stayed in the old site because the law decreed that they couldn't be moved for five years after their establishment in 1887. Eventually new structures were built in the new town center, to the east of the original one.
Amarillo continued to expand to the east. Soon it lopped over to the adjacent Randall County. And here's where I come in.
Randall County, unlike the rest of the Panhandle, was wet. You could buy a beer in Randall County and sit down and drink it. But not across the line in Potter County.
Think of the revenue. All those people in Potter County streaming across to Randall County to spend their money. Bootleggers driving in and out, trucking their cargo to those thirsty college students down in Lubbock. Wow!
I'm sure that's all been settled by today. Even here in Georgia the number of dry counties has dried up. Texas has gone legal.
Or has it?
Dac Crossley
June 16, 2019. Happy Father's Day.
"The Golden Years have come at last. The Golden years can kiss my ass." (attributed to the Cat in the Hat)
When I attended grad school in Athens, GA in the late 1960s, the town was dry with respect to the hard stuff. I knew people who rented uhaul trailers, took orders from the neighbors and went into the wet county nearby and brought home a supply. When the town went wet, the number of good restaurants multiplied.
Posted by: Lesley A. Diehl | June 16, 2019 at 07:42 PM