Bailey County Texas map
34.07° N · 102.83° W · County seat: Muleshoe · 828 sq mi
Bailey County is a New Mexico border county on the northern South Plains with one incorporated town in it. Muleshoe holds about three-quarters of the county's 6,904 people; south of it, on the saline playa lakes of the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge, sandhill cranes winter by the thousand at the oldest national wildlife refuge in Texas.
The state line runs down the left side of the frame. Muleshoe sits at the crossing of US-70 and US-84 in the northeast quarter of the county.
Where Bailey County is
Bailey is in the second county row south of the Panhandle line, with its whole west side against New Mexico: Curry County to the northwest and Roosevelt County to the west, both on Mountain Time, so the clock changes at the state line. In Texas it borders Parmer north, Lamb east, Hockley southeast and Cochran south.
Lubbock is about 65 miles southeast and is the region's hospital, airport and university city; Amarillo is 98 miles northeast. The surface is the Llano Estacado — level, treeless, close to 3,800 feet, with no through-flowing river. Rainfall runs into shallow playa basins instead, and irrigation comes from the Ogallala Aquifer below.
The county is named for Peter James Bailey III, a Kentucky lawyer who died with the garrison at the Alamo. It was drawn on the map in 1876, but ranching held the land for decades: much of Bailey County lay inside the XIT Ranch, the three-million-acre spread the state traded for the construction of the capitol in Austin, and settlement only followed when the XIT began selling farm tracts.
Muleshoe
| Place | Type | Population (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| Muleshoe | City · county seat | 5,131 |
Muleshoe is the only incorporated place in the county; everything else — Baileyboro, Enochs, Needmore, Circle Back — is an unincorporated crossroads or a former school district. The town took its name from the nearby Muleshoe Ranch, and it has leaned into it: the National Mule Memorial, a life-size statue dedicated in 1965 to the mule's part in settling the country, stands beside the highway on the west side of town. Cotton gins, grain elevators, feedyards and a dairy industry that arrived in the 2000s make up the local economy.
Roads
- US-84 – the diagonal, running southeast from the New Mexico line through Muleshoe toward Littlefield and Lubbock, and northwest to Clovis, New Mexico. It is the fastest way out of the county in either direction.
- US-70 – east–west through Muleshoe, running east toward Plainview and west into New Mexico at the state line.
- SH-214 – the north–south road, north to Friona in Parmer County and south past the wildlife refuge toward Morton in Cochran County.
There is no interstate in Bailey County or in any county touching it. The BNSF line that runs beside US-84 through Muleshoe carries the grain and the freight, and it is the reason the town sits where it does.
Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge
Twenty miles south of town on SH-214, the refuge protects three shallow saline lakes — Paul's, White and Goose — and the shortgrass prairie around them. It was established in 1935, which makes it the oldest national wildlife refuge in Texas, and it was created specifically as a wintering ground for migratory birds on the Central Flyway.
The draw is sandhill cranes. They arrive in autumn, roost on the lakes overnight and fly out to feed on harvested grain fields during the day; in wet years the counts run into the tens of thousands, and in dry years, when the lakes hold no water, the birds move elsewhere. Ducks, geese and hawks use the same basins, and prairie dogs, pronghorn and burrowing owls are on the uplands. A short gravel road, a campground with no hookups and a few miles of prairie trail are the only development, and the drive from Lubbock takes about an hour and a half by US-84 and SH-214.
The lakes are the natural version of what the whole county depends on. Playas catch what little rain falls, recharge the aquifer beneath, and support both the wildlife and, indirectly, the centre pivots that grow the cotton and corn on the surrounding sections.