Cochran County
Texas' Last Frontier
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Where the pavement ends & the west begins
Cochran County was formed in 1876 from land originally assigned to Bexar and Young counties. Cochran County is part of the Llano Estacado and covers 783 square miles comprised mostly of prairie land. Cochran County is home to several small lakes, including Silver Lake. The county was named after Robert E. Cochran, who died defending the Alamo. The county seat is Morton, other towns in the county are Whiteface, Bledsoe, Griffith, and Lehman.
5,000 to 10,000 years ago Native Americans hunted in the area now known as Cochran County. During 1600s the Kiowa and Apache hunted and battled in the area and by the 1700s the Quahadi (Antelope), a band of Comanches, won the area in battle and remained dominant until the 1870s when they were forced out by the United States Army.
Before the 1920s the area was predominately made up by ranches, most of the land being controlled by the XIT Ranch which covered approximately 3,000,000 acres of land. In 1887 XIT manager Albert G. Boyce divided the ranch into seven divisions; Cochran County was known as the Las Casas Amarillas (Yellow Houses) division and served as the breeding range for XIT Ranch. Around 1898 Christopher Columbus Slaughter bought 246,669 acres of land in Cochran and Hockley counties and established the Lazy S Ranch. The Slaughter ranch headquarters were originally established near the town of Lehman, but moved a year later two miles southwest of Morton. In 1901 some of the land in Cochran County was bought as part of the 238,585 acres purchased by George Washington Littlefield.
C.C. Slaughter died in 1919 and in 1921 his heirs began to sell their lands to farmers. In 1924 a political struggle began between the Slaughter family, who founded the town of Ligon (four miles south of Morton) and Morton J. Smith who founded the town of Morton. Each party wanted their towns to be named the county seat. In a 1924 election the town of Morton was elected county seat by vote of 79 to 20. In 1925 Santa Fe Railroad built into Cochran County from Lubbock and the towns of Whiteface, Chipley, Lehman and Bledsoe were established. The railroad made Bledsoe the largest town in Cochran County in the 1920s, but the town declined afterwards with most of the residents moving to Morton. In the mid-1980s Santa Fe Railroad abandoned its tracks in Cochran County. During the Great Depression the county was faced with some of the worst sand storms seen and new sand dunes as high as 28 feet were reported. In 1936 the discovery of oil provided jobs and helped to stabilized the county economy. By 1940 the number of farms in the area increased to 431 with over 90,500 acres of cropland being harvested and farmers began turning to cotton and sorghum. During World War II oil business boomed in Cochran County and the agriculture business steadily grew. In 1949 Girlstown, U.S.A. was established on Duggan ranchland near Whiteface.
The 1890 census showed a population of 0. By the 1920s the county reported a population of 67 residents. The 1930 census listed 1,963 persons residing in the county. Population in Cochran County peaked in 1960 with a population of 6, 417 and continues to steadily decline. In 1970 the county population was 5,326 and by 2010 the county population was 3,127. In 2012 the United States Census Bureau estimated the county population to be 3,046.
While its population has remained small, its farms, cattle ranches, and oil make it an integral part of the Texas Heritage.
Sources: Texas State Historical Association and The United States Census Bureau
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