Paducah: A Kentucky Name in the Texas Plains

The county seat of Cottle County carries a name from eight hundred miles away. An early settler named R. Potts moved here from Paducah, Kentucky, and offered new arrivals free land in exchange for a vote to name the settlement and make it the county seat.

The deal held. Cottle County was organized in eighteen ninety-two, and Paducah was duly selected as its seat. A post office opened in eighteen ninety-one and a newspaper, the Paducah Post, followed in eighteen ninety-three.

The town peaked at nearly three thousand residents in nineteen fifty and has shrunk steadily since, typical of many small Texas Panhandle county seats losing population to larger regional centers. The Kentucky namesake, by comparison, sits on the Ohio River and has never much thought about its namesake out on the Rolling Plains.