Motley County Texas map
34.06° N · 100.79° W · County seat: Matador · 990 sq mi · Central Time
Motley County is where the flat plains stop. The Caprock escarpment runs through the western part of the county and everything east of it drops into red-rock breaks cut by the Middle Pease River and the Tongue River. That broken country never suited row cropping, so it stayed in cattle — most of it inside one enormous Scottish-owned ranch — and with 1,063 residents in 2020 Motley is among the ten least populous counties in Texas.
Centered on Matador. Zoom in on the northwest and southwest quarters to see the canyon systems draining east off the Caprock; the two towns are the only settlements on the map.
Where Motley County is
Motley is on the eastern edge of the South Plains where they give way to the Rolling Plains. Hall County is north, Cottle east and King at the southeast corner. Dickens is south, Crosby off the southwest corner, Floyd west and Briscoe northwest.
Lubbock is 69 miles southwest, up over the Caprock; Amarillo is 100 miles northwest and Wichita Falls 132 miles east. Elevation falls by roughly a thousand feet from the western county line to the eastern one, which is the single most useful thing to know about the terrain here — the county is really two landscapes with a rimrock between them.
The two towns
| Place | Type | Population (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| Matador (county seat) | Town | 566 |
| Roaring Springs | Town | 214 |
There are no other incorporated places, and the two together account for about three-quarters of the county's people. Matador grew up around the headquarters of the Matador Ranch and became the seat when the county organized in 1891. Roaring Springs, eight miles south on SH-70, was founded in 1913 when the Quanah, Acme & Pacific Railway built west through the county; it takes its name from a group of strong springs at the head of a draw, which supplied the town and, for years, a swimming pavilion that drew people from three counties.
Roads
- US-62 / US-70 – the east–west route, running together across the county through Matador: west to Floydada, east to Paducah and on toward Vernon.
- SH-70 – north–south through Matador and Roaring Springs; north to Turkey and Silverton, south to Dickens and Spur.
- No interstate – the nearest is I-27 at Plainview, roughly 60 miles west, or I-40 at Amarillo. Motley County traffic is US highway and farm road only.
The Matador Ranch
The Matador Land and Cattle Company was formed in 1882 when a syndicate of investors in Dundee, Scotland bought the existing Matador Ranch and ran it as a British-registered company from Dundee, with the working headquarters at Matador. It grew into one of the largest ranches in Texas, covering most of Motley County and spilling into the counties around it, with additional leased range in the Panhandle, Montana and Canada used to finish cattle. The company held together for nearly seventy years before it was sold and the Texas land broken up in 1951.
What that history means for the map is that Motley County was never subdivided into a farm grid the way the counties west of the Caprock were. Sections of the old ranch are still run as large cattle operations, and the road network reflects it: two highways, a handful of farm roads and long distances between gates.
The best-known piece of Caprock scenery is just across the northwest line — Caprock Canyons State Park, in Briscoe County near Quitaque, protects the same escarpment country and the state's bison herd. Motley County's own canyons are all in private hands.
The county is named for Junius William Mottley, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence who was killed at San Jacinto. The 1876 act that created the county misspelled his surname, and the misspelling stuck.