Dumas: Grasshoppers, Ghost Town, Comeback

Dumas, the seat of Moore County in the Texas Panhandle, was platted in eighteen ninety by Louis Dumas, president of the Panhandle Townsite Company, on land purchased from railroad surveys. A post office, hotel, general store, and county office all went up in the same first building. Moore County was organized with Dumas as county seat in eighteen ninety-two.

Then catastrophe arrived from two directions: a plague of grasshoppers stripped the summer of eighteen ninety-three bare, and a brutal winter followed in eighteen ninety-three to eighteen ninety-four. Even Louis Dumas gave up. He moved back to Grayson County.

By nineteen oh three the town's population had fallen to twenty-three people. A rail line announcement brought it back above one hundred by nineteen fifteen. Helium deposits were discovered in the county in the nineteen twenties, and natural gas development in the mid-twentieth century turned Moore County into a substantial energy producer.