We appreciate your interest in the Hutchinson County office of Texas AgriLife Extension Service.

Located in the north-central section of the Texas Panhandle, Hutchinson County, named for pioneer jurist Anderson Hutchinson, comprises 871 square miles of plains and broken terrain along the Canadian River, crossing the county from southwest to northeast.

Long before white settlers came to the area, now very dry by most appearances, it was fed by many springs, especially along the Canadian River. The water table has declined drastically in the last half-century, causing most of these old springs to dry up. Once, where they flowed abundantly, the area was lush with cottonwood, willow, salt cedar, and hackberry trees, as well as grapevines and plum thickets. Numerous sawmills cut many of the cottonwoods in the early 1900s, and though the trees returned, they never came back in their former size and numbers. Here also once roamed buffalo, bear, and panther. Though these animals are long gone, much wildlife remains, including mule and white-tailed deer, antelope, turkey, coyote, and several types of birds.

In 1890, the county was called home to nine ranches and 58 residents. Ten years later, in 1900, the number of ranches had increased to 63, farmers had moved into the area, and the population had increased to 303. For the next four decades, ranching dominated the county’s economy, while crop cultivation slowly made gradual headway.  Hutchinson County slumbered as a sparsely populated ranching and agricultural center until the discovery of the vast Panhandle oilfield in the early 1920s. Many of the area ranchers cashed in on the boom; and numerous townsites and oil camps sprang up almost overnight, including Sanford, Fritch, Phillips, Stinnett, Signal Hill, Electric City, and Dial. The largest and wildest of these boomtowns was Borger, Texas.

Today, Hutchinson County remains a farming, ranching, and oil-producing region. As oil production declined throughout the years, so did the population. As of the 2010 census, its population was Borger. Borger remains its largest city at about just a little over 13,000 people. Stinnett remains the County Seat and is called home to about 1,900. Other communities include Fritch and Sanford. Phillips, Dial, and Pringle are all but gone.