Childress, Texas, Named for the Declaration

Childress carries the name of George C. Childress, who drafted the Texas Declaration of Independence in eighteen thirty-six. The town itself arrived fifty years later, in eighteen eighty-seven, when the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway reached this corner of the Rolling Plains.

Two rival town sites, Childress City and Henry, competed for the county seat, and a railroad agent brokered a compromise: move all the buildings to Henry's flatter ground and rename the place Childress. By September of that year the relocation was complete. The railroad built a depot, a hotel, and a section house, and the town was off.

Childress County sits at the transition between the Panhandle's flatlands and the rougher terrain of the Red River breaks, making it both a ranching and dryland-farming county.