Wheeler: First Organized County in the Panhandle

Wheeler County holds a singular distinction: it was the first organized county in the Texas Panhandle, formally established on April twelve, eighteen seventy-nine. At that time, the first county seat was a rough settlement called Sweetwater, later renamed Mobeetie, which grew up around Fort Elliott and the hide yards of the buffalo trade.

Mobeetie boomed through the eighteen eighties as a supply point and social center for much of the Panhandle, but when Fort Elliott closed in eighteen ninety and the hoped-for railroad never came, the town collapsed. The county seat moved to Wheeler in nineteen oh seven. Named for Royal T. Wheeler, a nineteenth-century Texas Supreme Court justice, Wheeler remains the county seat today, a quiet Plains town that inherited a very loud history.