Historic Midland

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Above: A Texas & Pacific Railway
map encouraging the settlement of
West Texas.
Below: Opening of the townside of
Slaughter, 1907, at the Ford Hotel,
located 10 miles east of Midland on
the T&P Railroad.
Although today the only communities of significant
population in Midland County are
Midland (1997 estimate: 98,757) and
Greenwood, located 12 miles east of Midland
(1997 estimate: 8,300), during the latter years
of the 19th century and the first years of the
20th, numerous population centers, most of
which remained unincorporated but were often
centered around rural schools, sprang to life.
Many were started primarily to provide education
for the children of ranchers.
Few of the communities ever reached any
significant population levels, the exceptions
being Greenwood, Midkiff, Dameron City, and
Germania.
Greenwood, which resulted from the 1949
consolidation of the Prairie Lee, McClintic and
Stokes rural school districts to form Greenwood
Independent School District, and which, beginning
in the 1970s, developed as a suburb of
Midland, remains a growing community
today—both through expansion of its population
and commercial development.
Although the school is the main focus of the
community, by the 1990s Greenwood also
included a large residential area concentrated
about the school facility, a convenience store, a
feed store, a newspaper office, specialty shops,
restaurants, a car wash, a gravel plant, and other
businesses. In outlying parts of the Greenwood
Independent School District were various other
businesses.
Several churches also serve that community’s
residents, including Greenwood Baptist Church,
which was formed in 1907 by several families
that had been meeting for church in an aban-
34 ✦ HISTORIC MIDLAND