The townsite was surveyed in 1907 by H.W. Harlin and R.C. Herm on the Roscoe, Snyder and Pacific Railroad. A post office, store, and church were moved there from Wheat, a community to the northeast. In 1907 the new town, a trade center for livestock farmers, had two banks, a lumber yard, and a newspaper, and a two-story brick school was built in 1909. The Santa Fe Railroad came through in 1911. In 1918 the town was renamed Foch to honor a war hero, and the old name was restored in 1921. Six miles east lies Sand Stone Canyon, with Indian pictographs, and skeletons of extinct mammals have been excavated nearby.