Allison is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

and

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counterparts of incorporated places, such ...

(CDP) in northeastern

Wheeler County Wheeler County is the name of several counties in the United States: * Wheeler County, Georgia * Wheeler County, Nebraska * Wheeler County, Oregon * Wheeler County, Texas Wheeler County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of t ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, at the junction of Texas Farm Roads 1046 and 277. Founded in 1929 as a stop for the

Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway The Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway (P&SF) is a now-defunct railroad company that was a subsidiary of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF), operating primarily in the Texas Panhandle. History Chartered November 2, 1886 as The Southern ...

, the town was named for the general manager of the railroad, R. H. Allison. The Lone Star Townsite Company laid out the town. The town reached its height in population in 1941, just before the country entered

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, at 200. It was first listed as a CDP in the 2020 census with a population of 125. During the 1970s, Allison and the surrounding area benefited from the

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

and

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...

development in the Panhandle-Hugoton field, the largest-volume gas field in the United States, and the world's largest known source of

helium Helium (from el, ἥλιος, helios, lit=sun) is a chemical element with the symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. ...

. Between 1973 and 1993, the field produced over 8 trillion ft³ (230,000,000 m³) of gas. For years, the Allison Independent School District served the community's students. In 2003, however, the district merged with the neighboring Fort Elliott Consolidated Independent School District. The elevation for Allison is , and its coordinates are .

Climate

According to the

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, notabl ...

, Allison has a

semiarid climate A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of semi-ar ...

, ''BSk'' on climate maps. Allison is in the eastern Texas Panhandle, which is in the western portions of

Tornado Alley Tornado Alley is a loosely defined area of the central United States where tornadoes are most frequent. The term was first used in 1952 as the title of a research project to study severe weather in areas of Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, So ...

. A violent mile-wide tornado, F4 on the

Fujita scale The Fujita scale (F-Scale; ), or Fujita–Pearson scale (FPP scale), is a scale for rating tornado intensity, based primarily on the damage tornadoes inflict on human-built structures and vegetation. The official Fujita scale category is determ ...

, narrowly missed the town during the tornado outbreak of June 8, 1995. The Allison tornado was documented by science teams associated with the first of two

VORTEX projects The Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment (or VORTEX) are field experiments that study tornadoes. VORTEX1 was the first time scientists completely researched the entire evolution of a tornado with an array of instrumentati ...

References

External links

* * Unincorporated communities in Texas Unincorporated communities in Wheeler County, Texas Census-designated places in Texas {{WheelerCountyTX-geo-stub