Off The Beaten Path - Glazier, TX

[joe817]

GLAZIER, TEXAS. Glazier, on U.S. Highway 60 in north central Hemphill County, was founded when the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway reached its site. It was named for H. C. Glazier, a friend of pioneer merchant J. F. Johnson, on whose ranchland the town was platted in 1887. The location north of the Canadian River made Glazier an ideal shipping point for area cattlemen, especially during the rainy season when the river rose. When farmers settled in that area, they freighted their wheat by horse team to the railroad grain elevator at Glazier.

By 1915 Glazier was a thriving town with a bank, a newspaper, and a population reported at around 300. The extension of the Santa Fe line in 1916 from Shattuck, Oklahoma, to Spearman, Texas, drew away much of the cattle and wheat trade of Ochiltree and Lipscomb counties, on which Glazier had depended. In June 1916 a fire that started in a feed mill destroyed most of Glazier's business district. The town declined by 1920 to a population of 140. A tornado claimed twelve lives at Glazier in April 1947. By then only the post office and three businesses remained, and in 1959 the post office was closed. By 1984 Glazier reported twenty residents and no businesses. Its population was estimated at forty-five in 1990 and forty-eight in 2000.