Dalhart and the Ranch That Built a Capitol
Texas
Dalhart takes its name from its location on the county line between Dallam and Hartley counties, which is about as straightforward as Texas place names get. The town was founded in nineteen oh one when two railroads crossed here: the Rock Island and the Fort Worth and Denver City lines. But Dalhart's deeper claim to fame is its connection to the XIT Ranch, which once covered ten Panhandle counties north and west of here.
In eighteen eighty-one, the Texas State Capitol in Austin burned. The state owned three million acres of Panhandle land but had no cash. Chicago brothers Charles and John Farwell agreed to build a new capitol, the largest state capitol in the country, in exchange for that land.
They turned it into the XIT Ranch, then billed as the largest fenced cattle operation in the world. By the nineteen thirties, Dalhart was also battered by the Dust Bowl, the overplowed fields of the former XIT range turning to dust that blackened the sky. The XIT Museum in town tells both stories.
