Garza County, Texas: History
Indigenous peoples of the Americas were the first inhabitants of the area, with evidence from around 2000 BC. Later inhabitants were the Kiowa and Comanche.
In 1875, W. C. Young of Fort Worth and Irishman Ben Galbraith of Illinois established the beginnings of the Curry Comb Ranch in the northwestern part of Garza County.
Garza County was formed in 1876 from Bexar County, and named for Lieutenant Joseph de la Garza and his family who were prominent in Bexar County and decedened from José Antonio de la Garza.
By 1880, the county census count was 36 people. The Square and Compass Ranch was started 2 years later by the Nave and McCord Cattle Company. They put up the first barbed-wire fence in 1884. That same year, OS Ranch was founded by brothers Andrew J. and Frank M. Long of Lexington, Kentucky.
The county's population reached 185 persons by the last year of the 19th century. Post was founded in 1907 as a utopian venture by, and named for, cereal king C.W. Post. From 1909 to 1913, C.W. Post built a cotton gin and a cotton mill, and attempted to improve agriculture production through rainmaking, involving the heavy use of explosives fired from kites and towers along the rim of the Caprock Escarpment.
In 1926, oil was discovered in the county. Quanah and Bryan Maxey discovered a 16-foot-long tusk of a prehistoric imperial mammoth in 1934. This tusk is currently located in the American Museum of Natural History, New York City.
In 1957, a prehistoric Indian site was recorded at Cowhead Mesa by Emmet Shedd of Post. In 1960–1965, South Plains Archaeological Society excavations of Cowhead Mesa found artifacts to date inhabitation back to 2000 BC.
The most important businesses in the county by 1980 were agribusiness, oil and gas extraction, and textile mills.