The Mount Blanco Community

The Mount Blanco community took its name from a tall white mesa that served as a landmark on the Mackenzie Trail and was surveyed in 1871 by U.S. Cavalry scouting for Indians on the frontier. Near the mesa in 1877, frontiersman Henry Clay Smith built a two-story stone house for speculators Charles Tasker of Philadelphia and Lord Jamison of Ireland, creating the first permanent homestead in the South Plains Region. Smith also brought in cattle for Tasker and accepted the house as compensation when Tasker failed in business. In the fall of 1877, Smith moved his family there, with the nearest neighbor 50 miles east. The home became a way-station for prospectors, and Smith encouraged settlers including Paris Cox, the Quaker founder of Estacado. A post office opened in September 1879 with Mrs. Smith, Elizabeth Boyle, as postmaster. In 1886, Smith helped organize Crosby County. The area prospered and had a school by 1890. After 1900, farming largely replaced ranching. The post office closed in 1916, the school consolidated with Crosbyton in 1949, Smith's stone house burned in 1952, and the village of Mount Blanco lost its last store about 1956 and its church in 1965. By 1975, only a cotton gin and clubhouse remained as public buildings in Mount Blanco.

Texas · United States