About Roberts County

Roberts County is in the northwestern Panhandle, bounded on the north by Ochiltree County, on the east by Hemphill County, on the south by Gray County, and on the west by Hutchinson County.

The county was named for two distinguished Texans with the surname Roberts, John S. Roberts and Oran Milo Roberts. Miami is the county seat. The county is crossed by U.S. Highway 60, State Highway 70, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.

Roberts County covers 924 square miles of rolling plains with elevations that range from 2,467 to 3,219 feet above sea level. The county has a growing season of 192 days, the soils are black, sandy loam with clayey subsoils, and between 11 and 20 percent of the land is considered prime farmland.

Prehistoric cultures occupied this region, followed by Plains Apaches. In the early eighteenth century the Apaches were pushed out by the Comanches, who then dominated the area of the Texas Panhandle until the 1870s.

The nomadic Comanches hunted the immense herds of buffalo that ranged through the area that would become Roberts County. The actions of Ranald S. Mackenzie and federal troops in the Red River War of 1874-75 removed the Indian threat. At the same time buffalo hunters killed off the great herds of bison.

The first settler was Bill Anderson, who arrived in 1876. Henry Whiteside Cresswell established the first ranch on Home Ranch Creek in 1877. Cresswell included most of Roberts County in his Cresswell Ranch and ran 45,000 cattle on land spanning several counties.

By 1890 Roberts County had a population of 326 and thirty-four farms and ranches. The county population slowly grew to 620 in 1900, 950 in 1910, and a peak of 1,469 in 1920.

Roberts County's population was relatively static in the 1920s, with 1,457 inhabitants in 1930. Thereafter a long term decline set in, as the county population fell to 1,289 in 1940, 1,031 in 1950, and 967 in 1970 and then recovered slightly to 1,025 in 1990. Throughout its history Roberts County has remained one of the most sparsely populated counties in the state. In 1990 Miami, the county seat and the only incorporated community in the county, had 675 inhabitants, or two-thirds of the county's residents.

The Roberts County Museum, housed in the restored Santa Fe depot, contains, among other things, paleontological artifacts collected by Judge J. A. Mead in the 1930s. Miami holds a National Cow Calling Contest every June in the city park; the contest was begun in 1949 as part of the town's annual Old Settlers' Reunion.

Miami, living up to its name, has continued to advertise itself as the "Sweetheart of the Plains." In 1991 it was an incorporated town reporting a population of 661 and thirty-seven businesses.

To post your Queries, Biographies, Bible Records, Deeds, Obituaries,
Pensions, and Wills, please visit the new Rootsweb Message Board
for Roberts County, Texas.

Roberts County Message Board

Roberts County Co-Coordinators:
LaRae Halsey-Brooks & Eireann Brooks

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This page was last updated April 30, 2009.

Bluebonnets - Texas State Flower

© 1997-2009 by the Roberts County Coordinator
for the TXGenWeb Project