Oldham County, Texas

Oldham County is in the northwestern corner of the Panhandle, bordered on the west by New Mexico, on the north by Hartley County, on the east by Potter County, and on the south by Deaf Smith County. Vega, the seat of government, is thirty miles west of Amarillo.

Cities, Towns & Communities

Adrian | Boise | Boys Ranch | Tascosa (Plaza Atascosa) | Vega – county seat | Wildorado

History

Oldham County History 1922. About three-fourths of the entire area of Oldham County was set aside and granted as a portion of the 3,000,000 acres given to the syndicate of capitalists who furnished the money for the building of the state capitol at Austin. As late as ten years ago it was stated that three-fifths of the county was held in immense pastures, and the process of breaking up the large ranch holdings into farms has gone forward more slowly in Oldham County than in many other sections of Northwest Texas. For this reason, largely, the county, though in area one of the largest, has a very meager population, farming is practiced in only a limited way, and the agricultural settler has made less inroad against the ranchers than in other parts of the Panhandle. On account of these general conditions, the amount of “improved land” at the last census was only about 12,600 acres, and in 1900 the census reported about 11,500 acres of such land. The number of farms increased from 23 to 87 between 1900 and 1910. The total area of the county is 987,520 acres, of which 513,855 acres were occupied in farms and ranches in 1910. As a stock range Oldham County has furnished immense numbers of cattle and other live stock to the Texas aggregate.

Oldham County History 

Courthouses

When Oldham County was organized in 1880, Tascosa was chosen as the county seat. A few years later the railroad came through the county, missing Tascosa by two miles. In 1915, the county seat was moved to Vega.

In 1884, Oldham County’s first courthouse, a two-story brick building, was constructed at Tascosa. Today the building serves as the Julian Bivins Museum. In 1915, the county’s second courthouse was built at Vega, at Main Street and US Hwy 385. The original hipped roof was replaced with a flat roof and the building remodelled in 1967.

Location

Vega, TX 35° 14′ 34.1952″ N, 102° 25′ 41.7396″ W

See map: Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, MapQuest