FRESNO, TEXAS (Collingsworth County). Fresno, southeast of Wellington in southeastern Collingsworth County, was the site of the first homesteads in the county. John Elliott and Philo W. Myers were the first to file claims on land there, in August 1888. Others soon followed, and by 1889 a small settlement had developed south of the Rocking Chair Ranch pasture. Initially the community was called both Elliott Flats and the South Side, but when a post office opened there at the home of P. W. Myers in July 1889, it was named Fresno. A school was built out of lumber hauled from Childress and opened in the summer of that year, with thirteen pupils taught by Mrs. W. O. Richards. In 1890 the Fresno settlers pushed for the county's organization, while the "Rockers" (Rocking Chair Ranch employees) initially sought to delay it. The settlers soon prevailed, and after the community of Wellington was elected to be the county seat, Fresno was rapidly eclipsed. Fresno's post office was discontinued in November 1893, with mail thereafter sent to Arlie in Childress County. During the mid-1980s a few scattered farms remained in the area.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Clyde Chestnut Brown, A Survey History of Collingsworth County, Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Colorado, 1934). Estelle D. Tinkler, ed., Archibald John Writes the Rocking Chair Ranche Letters (Burnet, Texas: Eakin Press, 1979). Estelle D. Tinkler, "Nobility's Ranche: A History of the Rocking Chair Ranche," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 15 (1942).
