Kirkland, Texas

Kirkland is a ghost town in southeastern Childress County, Texas, near US-287 and 8 miles Southeast of the modern city of Childress, Texas. The population was 44 the last time the official state map was published.[1]

History

The first townsite of Kirkland was actually in Hardeman county along a stage coach line from Wichita Falls to Mobeetie, but with the arrival of the Fort Worth & Denver City railroad in 1887, the settlement moved to its present location. At its previous location, it had "an inn, two saloons and a general store."[1]

Settler John Quincy Adams, along whose land the FW&D tracks were laid,[2] platted a well-gridded[3] townsite that soon became home to a mercantile store, a post office and a stockyard serving an ever increasing number of farmers. The panic of 1893 was a setback to Kirkland, but by 1900 growth resumed,[2] and by 1905 Crone Webster Furr had established a mercantile store that became the beginnings of the Furr's Groceries and Cafeterias corporation. Roy Furr worked those stores as a boy, and as a man would expand the business in to an empire.[4] By the 1920s, "the Biggest Little City in Texas" had "three churches, a three-room school, and several businesses, including three grocery stores, two lumber yards, two barber shops, five filling stations, three hardware stores, and a bank".[2]

From here, however, the decline began, and by 1980, the once-proud community had only one general store and 100 inhabitants, when previously it had 500.[1] Today, the only significant remnants of the town are a (now dirt) street grid, a few houses and a cemetery.[3]

Kirkland Cemetery

Located approximately half a mile from the Kirkland town site, the Kirkland cemetery is two long wooded savannahs of marble headstones along a dirt road, containing the last earthly remains of citizens all the way back to 1908. Why there are no burials before 1908, even though the present town site had been inhabited since the 1880s, is a mystery. 725 well-marked gravestones stand on this site, of which 45 belong to veterans, including 7 Confederate veterans of the Civil War and 22 WW2 veterans.[5]

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References
  1. "Kirkland, Texas". Texas Escapes. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
  2. Anderson, H. Allen. "Kirkland, TX". Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
  3. "Google Maps location". Google Maps.
  4. "City's Most Influential, #9, Roy Furr". Lubbock Centennial. The Lubbock Bicentennial. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
  5. Key, Sydney. "Kirkland Cemetery". Cemeteries of Texas. Retrieved 26 January 2015.

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