Bovina was Bull Town before it was Bovina

Bovina began between two forks of Running Water Draw as the Hay Hook Line Camp of the XIT Ranch. When the Pecos and Northern Texas Railway crossed the ranch in 1898, it set a switch there so cowboys could unload cottonseed shipped in as cattle feed.

Some seed spilled beside the unfenced right-of-way. XIT cattle gathered around it and sometimes lay across the tracks, forcing railroad workers off their trains to prod them aside. The stop picked up the name Bull Town.

Postal service arrived on January 31, 1899, with the new name Bovina. By the early twentieth century, cattle moved through town at a national scale. A 640-acre shipping pasture lay one mile east of the historical marker now standing on U.S. 60.

The XIT ranch name has not disappeared either. Bovina's municipal recreation center is called the XIT Recreation Center, and the city handles memberships and one-time reservations through City Hall. Hay Hook, Bull Town, Bovina, and XIT all fit into one small town's vocabulary.