Texas’ uneven population boom is creating ghost towns in many rural counties

GOMEZ — The railroad changed everything.

Long before the open plains were filled with rows of crops, they were brimming with the hopes of prosperity from families who flocked to Gomez. It was the first settlement in Terry County, just southwest of Lubbock in the Texas South Plains. Businesses opened, a cotton gin ushered in agriculture production, and a vote was coming up to name a county seat. The founders, in 1904, boasted Gomez was the “metropolis of the plains.”

Then it all vanished. Brownfield, about four miles east, became the county seat and got the prized South Plains and Santa Fe Railway. Cut off from the rest of the world, Gomez and all its promises died.