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Subject: [JAY-L] Jayton TX
Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2000 12:40:25 EDT

JAYTON, TEXAS.
Jayton, the county seat of Kent County, is on State Highway 70 and Farm roads
1228 and 1083, twenty-three miles west of Aspermont and fourteen miles
northeast of Clairemont in the northeastern part of the county. It was
originally named Jay Flat and was two miles northwest of the present site.
The name honored a Jay family, early ranchers in the area. Daniel M. Jay was
granted a post office in the community in 1886. In 1907 the settlement was
moved to a location on the new Stamford and Northwestern Railway and renamed
Jayton. Within a short time many businesses had opened, and the town was
incorporated on February 11, 1910. The first newspaper was the Jayton Herald,
founded about 1908 by a man named Morris. An early recreation site was Putoff
Canyon, three miles north of Jayton. The canyon, named for a Mr. Putoff, had
a large freshwater spring that attracted writers and artists from 1900 to
about 1914. One visitor was Zane Grey, who used the setting for his novel The
Thundering Herd (1925).
Numerous fires in the early 1900s destroyed or damaged a large number of
Jayton's early businesses before an adequate water system was constructed in
1925. Until its decline in the 1930s, cotton was the major economic factor
for the community. In the late 1930s oil was discovered in the county. In
1954, after a lengthy court battle, Jayton replaced Clairemont as county
seat. Loss of the railroad by the early 1960s and a limited local economy
kept the population at a modest level; it varied from a high of 750 in the
mid-1920s to about 638 during the 1980s. In 1980 Jayton had a post office, a
bank, and ten businesses. With its chief economy based on farming and
oil-related services, the town was the only incorporated town in the county.
Jayton had a population of 608 in 1990.
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Source:
Handbook of Texas

Posted to by
Charles Jay
9/1/00

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