Aspermont: The Rough Mountain
Texas
The county seat of Stonewall County carries a Latin name meaning rough mountain, chosen in eighteen eighty-nine by the developer A. L. Rhomberg who platted the townsite.
The surrounding landscape of the Rolling Plains bears that out: eroded gypsum hills and red-clay breaks cut through what looks from a distance like flat tableland. Stonewall County itself was created in eighteen seventy-six and named for Confederate General Thomas Stonewall Jackson. Aspermont did not become the county seat without a fight: its citizens made several attempts beginning in eighteen ninety-two, finally winning a vote in June of eighteen ninety-eight and sealing the deal when a courthouse contract was signed in nineteen hundred.
A railroad arrived in nineteen oh nine, and ranching, farming, and petroleum have sustained the area ever since.
