HURLEY, TEXAS. Hurley, three miles north of the site of present Muleshoe, was the first community in Bailey County. To entice prospective settlers to the area, the Coldren Land Company platted the town, in 1907. On August 2 of that year, a post office was granted to the community with H. C. Good as postmaster. By 1908 the community had a population of twenty-five, a store, a school, a stable, an icehouse, a hotel, and a church. That same year James Johnson of the Coldren Company bought the section on which Hurley was located. Several social events were organized to interest visitors in the community, but its fate was decided when the Pecos and Northern Texas Railway bypassed it by three miles. In September 1912 the Fairview Land and Cattle Company platted a new Hurley on the rail line and organized the Hurley Townsite Company. The new town was to have telephone lines, electric wiring, water and sewer service, and streetcars. A store and the post office were moved to the new site in 1913, and the community's population grew to around 100. At that time a Congregational church was built there, as was a broom factory. However, a conflict arose with the railroad when Hurley Townsite agents demanded too much money for the right-of-way. Trains refused to stop in Hurley, and the new town of Muleshoe, established in part because of this conflict, became the railroad's new depot. The townsite company gave Hurley residents expense-free trips to Austin to plead the town's case. Soap was even occasionally rubbed on the track to make the trains stop, but the railroad won its case. When the county seat election was held in 1918, Muleshoe received seventy-four votes to Hurley's thirty-six. Some of the Hurley buildings were moved to Muleshoe, and Hurley declined rapidly; it was virtually abandoned after its post office was moved to Muleshoe in December 1926. No evidence of the old or new Hurley appeared on the 1983 county highway map.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: LaVonne McKillip, ed., Early Bailey County History (Muleshoe, Texas, 1978). Thelma Lee Stevens, History of Bailey County (M.A. thesis, Texas Technological College, 1939).

Charles G. Davis