Cheyenne, TX

Cheyenne was on the W. F. Scarborough Ranch, nine miles north of Kermit in northern Winkler County. In 1926 oil was discovered in the county, and in 1927 the Scarborough field was found. Anticipating an oil boom in 1928, newcomers built a number of shacks at Cheyenne. A bond election was called by the Winkler County Commissioners Court in the amount of $75,000 to build a school. However, the bonds were cancelled, and the school was never built. Cheyenne lost in competition with another new town called Leck, located five miles to the west in the newly-discovered Leck oilfield.

Although a post office was established at Cheyenne in 1929, the townsite was returned to W. F. Scarborough the next year. He moved the post office to a site east of the newly constructed Texas-New Mexico Railway and near State Highway 82, which later became State Highway 18. A large building was constructed for the post office and a grocery store. Residences were built for the postmaster and the store keeper. A railroad section house and several smaller houses were erected also. Four businesses were reported at Cheyenne in 1933, but only one was still in operation in 1939, when a population of twenty-five was recorded. Shipping pens held the many cattle sent by railroad from Cheyenne during the 1930s and early 1940s. The railroad abandoned Cheyenne in the 1940s, and the post office closed in 1944.