Tulia, Texas

Tulia is the county seat of Swisher County, named for James G. Swisher, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. The name Tulia started as a mistake: settlers wanted to call their post office Tule, after Tule Creek nearby, but a postal clerk's error changed the spelling to Tulia when the post office was established in eighteen eighty-seven, and the altered name became official when Swisher County organized in eighteen ninety.

The area began as open ranching range with only about one hundred people in the entire county in eighteen ninety. By nineteen ten, five hundred and ten farms were operating and crop farming had taken hold, with sorghum, corn, and wheat spreading across land that had been pure cattle range a generation before. Tulia sits on U.

S. Highway Eighty-Seven forty-nine miles south of Amarillo, and the High Plains geography that surrounds it is as flat and unobstructed as anywhere in the United States.