As the wounds of the nation caused by the Civil War strife began to heal, a mass migration to new developed lands began in the waning decades of the nineteenth century. One such area held promises of rich grass, rich soil and a place for new life: that area was the Texas Panhandle. Bound by a lawless area to the north known as “No Man’s Land,” what was to become known as Lipscomb County must have appeared both beautiful and formidable at the same time.

As the early settlers came to this northeastern-most part of Texas, they found everything needed to establish a home, running water, tall grass, wild turkey, prairie chickens, wild plums and grapes and the bountiful buffalo sod for building. This future Lipscomb County was bisected by Wolf Creek and laced with its tributaries and offered many pleasant groves of cottonwood and willows as a relief to the vast expanses of buffalo grass. Of these, that picturesque place where Plummer and Kiowa creeks merged, was to soon become a favorite picnic area for the settlers in outlying areas and some years later, the site of Darouzett.

These virgin lands the settlers found in the 1880’s had been tramped by surveyors’ boots back in 1874: the state of Texas granted major portions of the county to the railroads in order to encourage their building lines in the new areas of settlement. Of these sections surveyed in 1874, one section, number 159, became the site of the town now known as Darrouzett. In 1876, that section sold at a sheriff’s sale for a total of $75 to W.J. Hutchins who resold the section to Leonard Light in 1893 for $1,920. In 1917, W.F. Adams bought forty acres for a tinniest and then sold three-quarters interest to J.B. Cartwright and O.E. Hilton. In the interim between the actual surveying of the lands in 1874, the settlers witnessed numerous changes in the geography of the county.

In 1917 as the railroad finally pushed westward from Shattuck, OK, to the Kiowa creek, what had long been a favorite picnic spot assumed new significance. The beautiful little valley framed by Plummer and Kiowa creeks offered an ideal tinniest;several hundred feet below the prairie level, it afforded protection for future homes and businesses. Although the grading for the railroad commenced January 1, 1917 and was completed March 7, 1917, and the laying of the track began in August of that same year, it was not until July 1, 1920 that the Santa Fe line was finished. It seems the little town that began to appear was off to a slow start as a result of World War 1. Originally named Lourwod after the first child born there, Opal Lourwood, the little town did not gain too much momentum until 1919 when the Sunset community in Oklahoma just north began to move to be next to the railroad.

After the momentous July 1, 1920 when the rail was finished and the first train came to town, Lourwood, renamed Darrouzett by the president of the Santa Fe Railroad, was on its way. As a token of appreciation for legal services performed, the rail president christened an infant town in the Texas Panhandle after John L. Darrouzett, lawyer and later a state legislator in the 1920’s from Galveston.