BARTONSITE, TEXAS
The Barton mansion stands at its
original location above, and at
left after its relocation 18 miles
south to the National Ranching
Heritage Center in Lubbock, Texas.80GHOST TOWNSWILD WEST JUNE 2019T
he life story of many a Western boomtown turned
ghost town pivots on the lure of mineral wealth—
real or imagined. Others were born of a different
sort of anticipated wealth, the kind that followed
the arrival of a railroad.
Such a story begins in 1907 with the creation of Bartonsite,
a planned community on the Llano Estacado that by 1921 had
all but disappeared. The last vestige of its existence vanished
from the west Texas landscape in 1975 when movers relocated
the grand old Barton mansion 18 miles south to the National
Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock, Texas. There it sits today,
fully restored amid a collection of similarly rescued Old West
ranching structures. Bartonsite, or the spot where it once stood,
hasn’t been entirely forgotten.The prospect of commerce and long-term wealth based on
a railroad had roots as deep, if not deeper than, any mother lode
or vein of precious metal. Those who espoused it took a long
view of a future based on building communities vs. the short-
term get-rich-and-get-out view held by most prospectors. It was
this long view that in 1907 made Joe Barton jump with both feet
into the midst of land development in Hale County, just north
of the Lubbock County line.
Sixteen years earlier Barton and two uncles had moved west
from the Waco area, purchased 50 sections of grazeland and
started the TL Ranch. By the turn of the 20th century they’d
amassed a small fortune in land and livestock. Then, as the
Santa Fe Railroad pushed into west Texas, Barton learned it was
to build a spur south from Plainview to Lubbock and just knewTHE WEST TEXAS TOWN ROSE ON THE PROSPECT
OF A RAILROAD THAT NEVER ARRIVED
BY LAZELLE JONES