The first school in what became the Hobbs community was Buffalo, which met in a tent on Buffalo Creek from 1887 to 1888. The Rev. Robert Martin built a church and schoolhouse there with money from his home church in Louisiana. By 1896 the school had been named for Vachel Hobbs Anderson, postmaster at Roby, and had moved several times. In 1922, J. W. Hale became county school superintendent, and his work helped lead voters in 1924 to combine the Hobbs, Dallas, Grady, and Baird common school districts into Hobbs Consolidated Common School District No. 18. A new eleven-grade Hobbs school opened in 1925. Through later additions and annexations, Hobbs expanded from 85 square miles to 240 and absorbed many schools, including Guinn, Sardis, Lone Star, Buffalo, Claytonville, Camp Springs, County Line, Capitola, Sam Bone, Busby, Barronview, Plainview, Cottonwood, Bush, Lone Valley, Midway, Gannoway, Rico, Rough Creek, Chicken Foot, Linn, and Pyron. In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration added primary, home economics, and vocational agriculture buildings, and a twelfth grade was added. After World War II, the rural population declined as people moved to cities. High school enrollment reached 380 in the 1940s. A new building was erected in 1956, a cafeteria in 1969, and a new vocational agriculture building in 1976. The high school closed in 1980, and when elementary enrollment fell to 13 in the fall of 1989, Hobbs Independent School District was dissolved and annexed to the Roby, Rotan, and Snyder districts.