Yoakum County went from nearly empty rangeland to an oil and cotton center

The Texas Legislature created Yoakum County in 1876, carving it from the old Bexar District. It was named for Henderson King Yoakum, a 19th-century Texas historian. For decades the land was used mostly for open-range cattle grazing. The U.S. Census found only four people living here in 1890.

Plains was established around 1905 and became the county seat when the county formally organized in 1907. Cotton farming grew through the 1920s and 1930s. Then in 1936, oil was discovered, and that find eventually shaped everything. Denver City, founded in 1939 near the oil fields in the southern part of the county, grew quickly. By the early 1990s the county had produced over 1.6 billion barrels of crude oil since that first discovery.