The Texas and Pacific Railway helped make this place the Cattle Capital of West Texas in the 1880s. Cattlemen Frank Byler, Clay Mann, Winfield Scott, C.C. Slaughter, and others brought herds here as early as 1877, when the last of the buffalo were being exterminated, and a Texas Ranger unit was stationed in the area to guard against straggling Indians. After Texas and Pacific locators staked a course through this valley, rancher George Waddell persuaded A.W. Dunn of Coleman to build a store here. Lumber came by wagon from Round Rock, about 300 miles southeast, and was used sparingly. The store, with a tarpaulin roof and dirt floor, opened in late summer 1880, and two saloons soon followed. Railroad workers, including the bridge crew of A.J. Coe, arrived in the fall. By April 16, 1881, when the Texas and Pacific began train service to this site, about 350 people lived here in tents and dugouts, and the community had a newly organized county government, a school, post office, and newspaper. It remained the terminus for months while a river bridge was built. Afterward and until the late 1880s, it served as a shipping point for distant places such as the ranches of Charles Goodnight and the XIT near present Amarillo. The T. and P. brought in tons of windmills and barbed wire and shipped out thousands of cattle, giving the city renown.