Clockwise from top left:
Joe Barton’s son Jack
mans the sheep pens;
the Bartonsite school
was still in the teaching
business in 1920; the
Barton cattle ranch kept
busy, town or no town.JUNE 2019 WILD WEST 81HIS
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GHOST TOWNSthe railbed would have to either cross his extensive
property or run alongside it. Lingering anecdotes
explain Barton’s belief the railroad would face the
fewest challenges by crossing Blackwater Draw
on the North Fork of the Double Mountain Fork
of the Brazos River, where it flowed northwest to
southeast through Barton’s property.
With that in mind Barton had a sizable chunk
of his adjacent land surveyed and platted for a
townsite, including named streets and both resi-
dential and commercial zones. He then began mar-
keting plots in his new town, which he named—and
there is no mystery about this—Bartonsite. The plat
encompassed the Santa Fe’s future route and a site
for the depot.
Ever the optimist, Barton purchased a set of house
plans and built an elegant 2½-story Victorian-style
residence at the corner of 3rd Street and Avenue D,
spending some $3,000 (a small fortune in 1909) on
its construction. The Barton family and descen-
dants would live in the house right up through its
1975 relocation to the National Ranching Heritage
Center [depts.ttu.edu/nrhc].
To get his town off the ground, Barton personally
greeted potential residents and business clients,
chauffeuring them up and down the newly laid-out
streets in his shiny new Oldsmobile. Joe’s sales
pitch centered on how the Santa Fe would soon be-
gin laying track and how Bartonsite lay astride the
path the railroad would have to follow. Prospects
looked good, and he sold several lots to investors
for future homes and commercial enterprises. Con-struction began, as Bartonsite welcomed a general
store, a hotel, a church, a school and a lumberyard
and several homes. By 1909 a post office had opened,
and Bartonsite boasted 250 residents, all antici-
pating the railroad’s arrival.
That same year, however, Barton’s pipe dream
came to screeching halt when competing entrepre-
neur M.G. Abernathy and two other businessmen
formed the South Plains Investment Co. and con-
vinced the Santa Fe to route its Plainview-Lubbock
spur a dozen miles to the east of Bartonsite. The
new location gave rise to the town of Abernathy—
whose name also bears no explanation. The fallout
came hard and fast. Even before the first Santa Fe
locomotive and railcars pulled into Abernathy,
residents and businesses were pulling out of Joe
Barton’s town in the middle of nowhere. Over the
next few years folks either had their buildings towed
by tractor the 12 miles to Abernathy or sold for
relocation. The post office finally closed in 1921.
Present-day Bartonsite is just that—all site and no
town, where oil derricks nod in the wind.