Hartley County Texas map
35.84° N · 102.61° W · County seat: Channing · 1,463 sq mi
Channing, a town of 280 people, is the county seat of Hartley County because it was the headquarters of the XIT Ranch — the three-million-acre spread the state traded for the construction of its capitol, which covered this county and nine others along the New Mexico line. Hartley is one of the wide western counties, 1,463 square miles against the 900-odd of the standard Panhandle square, and its west line is the 103rd meridian, with Mountain Time on the far side.
Channing is on US-385 in the east of the county; Dalhart straddles the county line at the top, with most of the town in Dallam County.
Where Hartley County is
Hartley is in the northwest corner block of the Panhandle, 61 miles northwest of Amarillo in a straight line. Two of its neighbours are in New Mexico and an hour behind: Union County to the northwest and Quay County to the southwest. In Texas it borders Dallam north, Sherman northeast, Moore east and Oldham south.
The county is short-grass plains sloping west toward the Canadian River breaks, treeless except along the creeks and along the shelterbelts planted around the ranch headquarters. Rita Blanca Creek runs north across the top of the county through Dalhart. Only about one square mile of the county's surface is water. Hartley is on Central Time and in the 13th congressional district.
Channing, Dalhart and the county line
| Place | Type | Population (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| Dalhart (part) | City · seat of Dallam County | 2,939 |
| Channing | City · county seat | 280 |
Dalhart straddles the Dallam–Hartley line and its courthouse is in Dallam County; the figure above is only the part inside Hartley County. Channing, with 280 residents, is one of the smallest county seats in Texas — the Hartley share of Dalhart holds ten times as many people.
Roads
- US-87 – the diagonal, southeast to Amarillo and northwest through Channing to Dalhart and on toward Texline and Raton Pass.
- US-385 – enters from Vega in Oldham County, runs north through Channing, joins US-87 into Dalhart and continues into the Oklahoma Panhandle.
- US-54 – leaves Dalhart southwest across the corner of the county toward Nara Visa and Tucumcari, New Mexico.
- SH-354 – the east–west link from Channing across to Dumas in Moore County.
US-87 and the parallel rail line have carried the same traffic since the 1880s: cattle out, supplies in. There is no interstate; the nearest is I-40, about 60 road miles south by way of Vega.
The XIT Ranch
In 1882 the state of Texas paid for its new capitol in Austin with land instead of money — just over three million acres of Panhandle range, laid out in a strip along the New Mexico border through ten counties including this one. The syndicate that took the contract stocked it with cattle, strung it with barbed wire and called it the XIT. The general office was at Channing, which is why the courthouse ended up in a town that never grew: the ranch was the county's business, and the ranch's business was done here.
The XIT sold off its land in blocks through the early 1900s, and the buyers became the ranches and dryland farms that still work the county. Dalhart, on the northern line, keeps the memory going with the XIT Rodeo and Reunion each August. The county itself was created in 1876 out of the Bexar district and organized in 1891; it is named for the brothers Oliver C. and Rufus K. Hartley, lawyers who reported the decisions of the Texas Supreme Court. Cattle feeding, dryland wheat and irrigated corn are the working economy now, with the feedyards concentrated toward the Moore County line.