1890
- 1909
The town of Lubbock was established as the Lubbock County seat in the winter of 1890 as a compromise between two competing towns on opposite sides of Yellowhouse Canyon. In early 1891, buildings from both towns were moved to a new site and in March 1891, the county government was organized. By July of that year, Lubbock County had a population of 250 and Lubbock was the fastest growing town on the South Plains. Lubbock's economy was dependent on its role as a trade center for several large ranches in the vicinity. As the cattle ranching economy changed and ranches were sold off in smaller tracts to farmers, the city developed as an agricultural trade center.
A treeless, windswept plain with virtually no clay provided little in the way of natural or familiar building materials. Early ranchers built half-dugouts into the sides of small canyons or hills, using wood from the few trees alongside the streams in the canyons to fashion upper walls and roof structures. Packed sod was applied to the roof as a waterproofing material, but it usually leaked mud into the interior during rainstorms. Though practical for very small quarters, dugouts were not very weathertight and were replaced with more substantial, traditional houses when the owner could afford it. Most of these abandoned dugouts have vanished completely due to deterioration.
Lubbock's isolation from large cities and the accompanying difficulty in freighting heavy construction materials by wagon made relatively lightweight wood the building material of choice for the struggling populace of Lubbock's infancy. The earliest houses and commercial structures were simple, one-story wood framed buildings with box and strip vertical wood siding. Naturally, expanding railways after 1850 increased the availability of wood and spread the use of lightweight wood framing systems. Several housing types called Folk, National, or Vernacular residences became common across the eastern half of the United States and were brought to Lubbock by its early settlers.
For many years the most prominent buildings in the small town were the two-story wood framed courthouse on the square and the two and one-half story Nicolett Hotel across Broadway to the south. Numerous whirling windmills provided the main skyline features - fitting in that they were also a key element in Lubbock's survival during the frequent droughts in its early years. In fact, the oldest vestige of Lubbock's built environment is the Caraway windmill at 50th Street and Indiana Avenue, constructed in 1891.
South side of Courthouse Square, c. 1907. The Nicolett Hotel is left of the windmill.
