Rawleigh Porteus Smyth, an Austin native and graduate of the Texas Military Institute, became a Brigadier General after duty in the Spanish American War. As a surveyor, he ran the boundaries in 1887 of the Two Buckle and other South Plains ranches and platted the towns of Plainview, Happy, Tulia, and Kress. He married Florence Tucker, who died in 1894, and was a Masonic leader. As a state legislator in 1897, he helped make laws to aid Plains settlers. As an irrigation advocate, he helped create the area's agricultural empire.