Lehman, Texas

Lehman, Texas
Unincorporated community
Lehman Lehman
Coordinates: 33°37′18″N 102°47′55″W
Country	United States
State	Texas
County	Cochran
Elevation	3,793 ft (1,156 m)
Time zone	UTC-6 (Central (CST))
• Summer (DST)	UTC-5 (CDT)
Area code	806
GNIS feature ID	1380075

Lehman is an unincorporated community in Cochran County, Texas, United States. According to the Handbook of Texas, the community had a population of 8 in 2000.

History

Originally, the town was four miles south of Morton and was known as Ligon. The Slaughters erected Ligon, named for Mrs. E. Dick (Ligon) Slaughter, C. C. Slaughter's daughter-in-law, in the hopes that the railroad would run through the town. The location was plotted and surveyed in 1923. The county's first town was Ligon. It had a general store and Hugh Knox's first service station in the county. The competition between the Slaughters and Morton Smith, their land agent and the man who established the town of Morton, gave rise to Ligon. Every group desired for their town to serve as the county seat. An election was held on March 17, 1923, and Morton was proclaimed the victor. However, the Slaughters contested the outcomes and won their case in court. Following another election on May 6, 1924, Morton was once more designated as the county seat. The town of Ligon relocated to the south of the train tracks and adopted the name Lehman in honor of the company's general manager, Frank A. Lehman, after the South Plains and Santa Fe Railway was constructed across Cochran County, merely four miles away. Floyd Rowland, "Prof" Angley, and other locals assisted in moving the town. The townsite was advocated by John Henry Pierce. Ligon's postmaster, Alvin O'Pry, kept his job. Cattle were sent and received from the Lehman terminal, and the nearby cowboys loved to visit Mrs. W. E. Angley's cafe. The ranching village had ten individuals and two businesses in 1936; by 1940, the population was projected to be 100. The Scrape-Out Ranch, owned by the Slaughters, was purchased by the government in 1945. Dubbed the Lehman Project, it was split up into farms and offered loans for 40 years to 29 veterans. It proved to be quite effective, as 25 percent of the loans were repaid within two years. The Lehman Gasoline Plant, the biggest non-agricultural industrial facility in Cochran County, was constructed in 1954 by Tellepsen Petro-chem Constructors. The factory coexisted with a National Sulphur Company plant in Lehman until 1965. Following the plant's closure in 1976, Cities Service Oil Corporation used the location as a compressor station. In 1982, the final year for which population data was available, just 15 people were living in Lehman. By late 1983, the railroad between Bledsoe and Whiteface had been abandoned, and Lehman had virtually vanished. However, only eight people lived in the community in 2000.

Geography

Lehman is located at the intersection of Farm to Market Road 769, Texas State Highway 125 and 214, 55 mi (89 km) west of Lubbock, 4 mi (6.4 km) south of Morton, 25 mi (40 km) west of Levelland, and 11 mi (18 km) west of Whiteface in central Cochran County.

Education

Lehman had its own school in 1923. It was moved to Lehman and only operated for a year while a brick schoolhouse was built and cost $30,000. The old wooden school building was used for social affairs. Today, the community is served by the Whiteface Independent School District.

Media

KOBR has a KCBD-TV satellite in the community.