ALLISON, TEXAS (Wheeler County). Allison is at the junction of Farm roads 1046 and 277 in northeastern Wheeler County. The settlement became a station on the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway in 1929 and was named for R. H. Allison, general manager of the railroad. A local post office was opened in October of that year, and by 1930 the settlement had a general store, two lumberyards, and three gins. Allison was laid out by the Lone Star Townsite Company and soon had electricity and gas. In 1932 the Allison Consumers' Water Club obtained a franchise for a public water system, and the town absorbed nearby Zybach. Uproarious by reputation, Allison was said to have had as many as twenty-five bootleggers operating stills during the prohibition era. Considerable excitement occurred in 1934 when two men robbed the bank and escaped in the cashier's car. By 1940 Allison had five stores, a filling station, and three churches. In 1965 a new telephone system was installed. In 1984 Allison had four businesses, a gin, a grain elevator, four churches, and a school. The population was estimated at 200 in 1941 and 135 in 1974, 1990, and 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sallie B. Harris, comp., Hide Town in the Texas Panhandle: 100 Years in Wheeler County and Panhandle of Texas (Hereford, Texas: Pioneer, 1968). William Coy Perkins, A History of Wheeler County (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1938). Millie Jones Porter, Memory Cups of Panhandle Pioneers (Clarendon, Texas: Clarendon Press, 1945).
