Bailey County was created on August 21, 1876, and named for Peter James Bailey, a Kentucky lawyer killed at the Alamo during the Texas War for Independence. Because it was thinly settled cattle country, it was attached for judicial purposes to Baylor County from 1876 to 1891 and to Castro County from 1892 to 1918. In November 1918, Bailey County was finally organized. Its first officials were W.M. Wilterding, judge; H.A. Douglass, sheriff and tax assessor-collector; C.C. Mardis, clerk; G.P. Kuykendall, treasurer; E.G. Hoskins, inspector of hides and animals; and J.B. Diggs, T.L. Snyder, C.E. Dotson, and John S. McMurtry, commissioners. At the first meeting of the commissioners court, in Blackwater Valley State Bank on January 16, 1919, C.D. Gupton was appointed justice of the peace. Muleshoe was designated county seat in a special election on April 12, 1919. A jail cell was purchased in June 1919 from neighboring Parmer County, and in July a contract was let for the first courthouse, a frame structure soon erected at a cost of $2,450. Since the institution of its government, this 832 square mile county, with its good water resources, has developed an outstanding agricultural economy, and its progress is a tribute to the standards of its pioneer settlers.