This prairie region split by the North Concho River was old Comanche, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Lipan, and Wichita hunting ground and may have been crossed by about six Spanish explorations between 1540 and 1654. In the 1860s and 1870s, Anglo-Americans hunted buffalo commercially here. An 1860s hunter, Capt. W. S. Sterling, had a dugout home on the creek that bears his name, and in the 1870s Frank and Jesse James kept horse herds on a tributary of Sterling Creek. In 1874 the United States Army occupied Camp Elizabeth, a Fort Concho outpost hospital, about ten miles west of here. Ranchers from other counties began bringing in large cattle herds in the 1870s to use the free grass, and after excluding small herds for a time, they allowed actual settlers to share the range. Family men staked land claims, grew crops in the valleys, and opened stores, schools, and post offices. On March 4, 1891, on the petition of 150 citizens, the county was created from part of Tom Green County and named for its first regular resident, with Sterling City as the county seat. Since the 1950s petroleum production has been important to the economy, yet the land has essentially remained range country grazed by cattle and sheep.