Cotton built Dawson County and still shapes its land and economy

Dawson County sits on the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado — the flat, elevated plain of West Texas. Early farmers recognized the land's potential. The first cotton bale in the county was grown in 1903, the same year Lamesa was platted. By the late 1920s and 1930s, cotton covered more than 60 percent of the harvested cropland. Irrigation, which arrived in the late 1940s, expanded cotton production even further.

The county was named for Nicholas Mosby Dawson, a soldier from Texas's Republic era. Lamesa — a name inspired by the mesa-flat terrain — won the county seat election in 1905 by just five votes. The Santa Fe Railroad reached Lamesa in 1910, connecting its cotton and later its oil to wider markets. If you are buying rural land here, you are likely looking at farmland with a deep agricultural history.