Shafter Lake was the first town in the then-unorganized Andrews County. It was platted in 1908 and named for a lake charted in an 1875 survey by Col. Wm. R. Shafter, whose maps and victories over powerful Indians opened the Permian Basin to settlement. A water trough built by John Underwood of Shafter Lake Sand and Gravel stood on a site then set aside for a courthouse. The place became a stopping point for ranchers and freighters traveling from Jal and Monument, N. Mex., into Texas, and the town began to grow around the trough. But when the 1910 vote on county organization gave the county seat to Andrews, the town moved there.