Canyon Valley is a
ghost town
A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...
in southern
Crosby County, Texas
Crosby County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 5,133. The county seat is Crosbyton. The county was founded in 1876 and later organized in 1886. Both the county and its seat are named fo ...
, United States. Today, only a few farms and ranches are scattered across the area.
Geography
Canyon Valley is located south of
Ralls in southwestern Crosby County. Only one road passes through Canyon Valley, and it is unpaved and passes through a low-water crossing that is often impassable during wet weather. The nearest paved road is
Texas State Highway 207, which passes to the west at a distance around .
Canyon Valley lies below the
Caprock Caprock or cap rock is a hard, resistant, and impermeable layer of rock that overlies and protects a reservoir of softer organic material, similar to the crust on a pie where the crust (caprock) prevents leakage of the soft filling (softer materia ...
, which defines the southeastern edge of the vast
Llano Estacado
The Llano Estacado (), sometimes translated into English as the Staked Plains, is a region in the Southwestern United States that encompasses parts of eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas. One of the largest mesas or tablelands on the North A ...
. It lies within the physiographic region known as the Rolling Plains in the highly eroded valley of the
Salt Fork Brazos River
The Salt Fork Brazos River is a braided, highly intermittent stream about long, heading along the edge of the Llano Estacado about east-southeast of Lubbock, Texas. From its source, it flows generally east-southeastward to join the Double Moun ...
.
History
In 1925, James A. Shoemaker brought his family to Crosby County, where he bought a quarter-section of land 3 miles south of the small community of Cap Rock. A three-room house was built on the property, while the land was cleared for farming. Water was hauled in barrels by wagon from the Salt Fork Brazos River until a well was dug with hand tools.
[Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum. 1978. A History of Crosby County 1876-1977. Dallas: Taylor, p. 490.]
The community grew slowly, but by the early 1930s, Canyon Valley had a
cotton gin
A cotton gin—meaning "cotton engine"—is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation.. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (); ...
and a general store. The Valley Gin produced 2,230 bales of cotton in 1934. In 1953, the commissioners court proposed a paved road that would have connected the Valley Gin to the "Ralls and Post Highway" (SH 207). Unfortunately, the proposed road was rejected by the district highway engineer. Although a paved road was never completed, two steel pony-
truss bridge
A truss bridge is a bridge whose load-bearing superstructure is composed of a truss, a structure of connected elements, usually forming triangular units. The connected elements, typically straight, may be stressed from tension, compression, or ...
s were constructed to span Lake Creek and another unnamed dry creek that intermittently becomes a tributary of the Salt Fork Brazos River. The lack of a paved road leading to the community limited the growth of Canyon Valley, and in the late 1950s, the Valley Gin shut down and consolidated with the gin in nearby
Kalgary, Texas.
Education
In the early days of Canyon Valley, as more families moved into the area, the number of children grew until enough children were present to justify building a school. In 1926, a one-room schoolhouse was built, and by 1928, a second room was added to the schoolhouse to accommodate the growing student population.
[ The total number of students in Canyon Valley school increased to 66 in 1934, and then reduced to 60 students in 1942. The school served the community until 1947, when it was consolidated with the Cap Rock school to form the Caprock Consolidated Independent School District. A grade school remained in operation at Cap Rock until August 23, 1960, when the district was consolidated with Ralls Independent School District.]
See also
* Blanco Canyon
*Double Mountain Fork Brazos River
The Double Mountain Fork Brazos River is an ephemeral, sandy-braided stream about long, heading on the Llano Estacado of West Texas about southeast of Tahoka, Texas, flowing east-northeast across the western Rolling Plains to join the Salt Fo ...
*List of ghost towns in Texas
This is an incomplete list of Ghost town, ghost towns in Texas.
Classification
;Barren site
* Sites no longer in existence
* Sites that have been destroyed
* Submerged
* Reverted to pasture
* May have a few difficult-to-find foundations/foo ...
* Little Red River
* McDonald Creek
*West Texas
West Texas is a loosely defined region in the U.S. state of Texas, generally encompassing the desert climate, arid and semiarid climate, semiarid lands west of a line drawn between the cities of Wichita Falls, Texas, Wichita Falls, Abilene, Texa ...
*White River (Texas)
The White River is an intermittent stream in the South Plains of Texas and a tributary of the Brazos River of the United States. It rises west of Floydada in southwestern Floyd County at the confluence of Callahan Draw and Running Water Dra ...
* Yellow House Canyon
References
External links
*
*
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Former populated places in Crosby County, Texas
Former populated places in Texas
Lubbock metropolitan area