Espuela grew from a dugout and small store that J.H. Parrish established in 1870 on the west bank of Duck Creek near this site, serving travelers and later cattlemen and buffalo hunters. After the last Native American tribes left the area in 1876, commercial buffalo hunters moved in and left tens of thousands of buffalo carcasses across the region. From 1879 to 1884, the area was free range land for 30 cattle outfits until the Espuela Land & Cattle Company acquired most of the free lands and 20 sections of public domain territory from the state, fenced 569,120 acres, bought most of the free range cattle, and placed its headquarters about two miles west of the future townsite. By the mid-1880s, the settlement that began with Parrish's store had become the largest community in the county. Parrish platted the town and became its first postmaster in 1883, a one-room schoolhouse replaced an earlier dugout school, and when Dickens County was created that year, Espuela became first the temporary and then the permanent county seat. In the summer of 1891, the town had a gristmill, blacksmith shop, several stores, a hotel, a bootmaker, a saloon, a newspaper, civic organizations, and a cotton gin, though it never had a courthouse or jail. On March 8, 1892, a new election prompted by boundary issues led to Dickens being chosen as the county seat. Although many settlers and businesses left, Espuela endured as long as the land and cattle company remained, but after the company sold the Spur Ranch near this site to E.P. and S.A. Swenson in 1905 and the post office moved to Spur in 1910, only the cemetery remained.