WOW! I cannot believe that I haven't written in this blog since February 23rd. Well, since I
am writing about the upper part of the Texas Panhandle in my other travel blog, I have decided to begin writing about an area on the western edge of the Texas Panhandle. Specifically, two "twin towns" that are only separated by a state border. Those towns are Farwell, Texas and Texico, New Mexico. Farwell is located on land that was formerly part of the XIT Ranch, that legendary, 3 million acre ranch that existed on the western edge of the Texas Panhandle in the late 1800s. In fact, Farwell is on the opposite end of the former ranch from Dalhart, which I have been writing about in my other travel blog. Farwell was named for two brothers who were part of the Capitol Syndicate, a group that received the land that would become the
XIT Ranch in exchange for building the state capitol in Austin. This deal was struck after the old capitol suffered a catastrophic fire in 1881.
The town on the New Mexico side of the border is Texico. The town's name is rather obvious, it is a combination of "Texas" and "New Mexico."
Farwell was platted as a townsite in 1905. I have not been able to find a founding date for Texico, but I believe it was established at about the same time. Most towns in this area were established in the first decade of the 1900s. Farwell was platted in 1905 at the point where two railroads entered New Mexico. One railroad ran southwest from Amarillo and the other one ran northwest from Lubbock. They meet just inside the state border, in Texas. The highways that were built in later years that parallel these two railroads, U.S. Highway 60 and
U.S. Highway 70, meet just inside New Mexico.
Farwell and Texico are roughly the same size, with Farwell being a tiny bit bigger. In the
2010 Census, Farwell had 1,363 people and Texico had 1,130 people.
