Lamesa, Texas

We've enjoyed our day in Lamesa! Another post with lots of pictures (and lots of reading if you want to read it all!).

A picture from yesterday evening - Miss Kitty enjoying the grass (and mud around the newly planted tree) on the hill behind where Miss Doozie is parked.

Both of our neighbors headed on out this morning. Our neighbors in the 5th wheel had 3(!) German shepherd rescues with them. They were SO well behaved. This was the youngest, Max...

... and Apollo, who would bring his toy to you but wanted to play tug with it.

We headed out to get a prescription filled at CVS. I had noticed that the Allstays App on my phone indicated that there was a Walmart in town, but I had done a google search and it indicated that the Walmart was closed... as a result, I've communicated with Adam, the Allstays creator - he indicated that the app on Android is not really being kept up to date. It is better on iPhone and best on the computer. Good thing that I do most of our travel planning on the computer! I really like the app, but he indicated that Google had some restrictions on what he could do on the Android (and increased his cost for the mapping software by almost 10 times, $10K/year to $96K/year), that decreased his willingness to keep the app updated on their platform.

One thing that I had read about was a "Chicago Marker", so we found it -- it seems that two communities had been established not far apart - Chicago and Lamesa. "Dawson County was organized in 1905, both towns entered the contest for county seat. When Lamesa won, residents of Chicago quickly relocated their homes and businesses there. The school and Baptist and Methodist churches also moved to Lamesa. Within days, the community of Chicago had disappeared." From another source, I read that the contest between Lamesa and Chicago was decided by just 5 votes - but it doesn't appear that there was any election debate or hanging chads or electoral college issue after the vote - the folks in Chicago just packed up and moved the 2 miles to Lamesa!

 I had also read that there was a "Dal Paso Museum" in downtown Lamesa. The information indicated that it had "limited afternoon hours", so we went by to see if it might be open today. It was not, but there was a sign next to the door that indicated that, if they were not open, we could go to the Chamber of Commerce (next door) and they would let us in! So we did!

The museum is housed in what used to be a hotel in town. After seeing the Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells (now derelict), it was nice to see that an old hotel has a current use... There were a lot of interesting exhibits...

In the "Religion" room, there was a notebook with copies of articles about various churches and their activities through the years... I photographed some that I found interesting!

There were a couple of interesting things about this article... one was that the "rider" who ultimately started the church rode in on a bicycle! As the "Chicago" sign indicated, the Methodist church moved to Lamesa after the vote to make it county seat. I was also surprised to see that there were 1000 members (date of 1952) - I wouldn't have thought there were that many residents, but I don't know what the historical population numbers are -- current population is about 9700 according to the lady in the Chamber of Commerce - "but it is growing, lots of business coming into town!"

In the notebook, there were a lot of clippings - many of them "courtesy of First Baptist Church" -- about all the different churches in town.

This copy of a handwritten document was the founding of a Baptist church....

... organized January 27, 1907, at the Mullins Schoolhouse.

There were rooms that were outfitted with furniture that had been in people's houses in town...

The bedroom suite

In other rooms, there were various pieces of memorabilia - I found this multi-page brochure encouraging people to "Come to God's Country" (aka Dawson County") to be so interesting - I took pictures of all the pages and have cropped them and am including all of it! I'll bet all my readers will be packing their bags to move to Dawson County.
Disclaimer: this document is almost 100 years old (handwritten note says "Early Twenties", data may have changed since it was written!

*Everybody* is happy and prosperous? It is in the brochure, it *must* be true!

Interesting simile - "working like a Turk" - I had not heard of this before, but it seems to be used in Tennessee Williams "The Glass Menagerie". And, "go to Halifax" seems to have been a polite euphemism for "go to hell".

I love it - "there is not another foot of land more today than there was when Texas was a wilderness or Methuselah was a kid."

  

"...come here physical wrecks, but who, today, are perfect examples of healthful, vigorous manhood and womanhood." (makes me wonder why they need a brochure...)

If this brochure is correct that "Storms are practically unknown in this section" - then it is only by a few miles that the storms miss this area. When we were driving yesterday, we had thought about stopping in Snyder, Texas (about an hour east), but the weather forecast indicated that they might have severe thunderstorms, and Lamesa's forecast indicated that they might have storms, but not as high a chance and not indicated as severe... thus we pressed on to Lamesa for the night!

Read that quote in the first paragraph under "Opportunity" outloud!

So, are you ready? Packing your bags to move to Dawson County?!?!?!?

The museum had such a wide range of items... I asked Dwayne if he thought a bronze cowboy hat would be comfortable - he seemed to think it might be a bit heavy!

I tried to talk Dwayne into giving my hair a "permanent"!

An advertisement for the local Chevrolet dealership....

1965 prices!

"Before the days of improved roads and automobiles Dawson County was composed of numerous little communities each maintaining their own small school and church."

After enjoying the Dal Paso Museum, we headed across the town square to the "courtyard" which is where the local "National Day of Prayer" gathering was to be held at noon. We appreciated getting to join with other Christians and being led in prayer by several of the local pastors in prayer for the community and our country. There were probably about 100 folks there in total.