Sandstorm! In the 1880s the railroads, land speculators and foreign and northeastern syndicates owning vast tracts of land in the Panhandle of Texas encouraged immigrants and homesteaders to buy cheap land and move onto the Llano Estacado. Large ranches like the 3,000,000 acre XIT and other huge spreads were broken up into saleable parcels that could be farmed. This migration was made possible by the extension of the railroads to provide transportation of agricultural products, the demise of the bison herds, the end of the Indian threat and the closing of the open range with barbed wire fences. With windmills and irrigation, cotton cultivation in the ten counties around Lubbock expanded rapidly on the Plains far north of Midland. Sand storms remained a hazard, especially in times of drought. As more farming loosened the top soil up on the south plains, sand storms could grow huge, dark and threatening, like this storm on April 18, 1918. The photo view was taken from the old Llano Hotel on the east side of Main Street looking north on Main St. in Downtown Midland. The domed building to the left is the old 1st Baptist Church on the northwest corner of Main at Texas Ave. Straight across the street due east from the Baptist church is the 1st Methodist Church which still occupies the land but the sanctuary building in the photo was razed in the 1940s. (Photo courtesy of the Midland Historical Museum collection.)
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 06:42:13 +0000