ALLRED, TEXAS. Allred is just north of State Highway 83 and seventy miles southwest of Lubbock in southern Yoakum County. At the site was once the largest undeveloped oilfield in Texas. The town was conceived by Walter E. Young and M. A. Shields in 1937, soon after the first oil discoveries, and probably named for Governor James Allred; actual building started in January 1938. The Allred water well was dug in January. The first lot of the original forty-acre townsite was sold to Alva Willis on February 12, 1938, and the town's post office opened in May. Later, three additions of forty acres each were added so that the town could handle a population of 3,000. The Graves Grocery, operated by Harold W. Graves, the first business establishment of Allred, opened in March 1938. Young sold his interest in the townsite to Pat Malone in January 1939; Malone enlarged the light plant and provided the town with an adequate telephone system. In 1939 the town's population of 1,200 made it the largest in Yoakum County, and new people were moving in daily. On May 25, 1939, Roy Royal published the first and only issue of the Allred Times. That same year a new school was built on the north side of town. The population declined to 750 by 1940 and to 150 by 1947.
In 1956 the Allred school district and the Sligo school district were consolidated. The Allred school building was abandoned and later used as a community building. In 1957 the Yoakum County Gas Company, which had served Allred since 1939, found it unprofitable to serve the five remaining families and discontinued service to the town. Later that year the church, the post office, and the grocery store closed. The population of Allred was fifty in 1964, though a few people still lived there in the 1980s. By 2000 the population grew to ninety.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Denver City Press, August 23, 1956, March 7, 1957.
