A log-cabin stage stop became Gray County's county seat

Before Lefors had a courthouse, it had Travis Leach's log cabin. Leach settled on the future townsite in 1882. His cabin became a stagecoach stop on the mail route linking Fort Elliott and Mobeetie with Tascosa. The town was later named for Perry LeFors, a Diamond F Ranch foreman who also served as its constable.

A post office opened in 1892, and postal officials changed the capital F in LeFors to lowercase. When Gray County organized on May 27, 1902, voters chose Lefors as the county seat. Its two-story frame courthouse cost less than $2,500. Postmaster Henry Thut became county treasurer and built a hotel.

Lefors did not miss the oil boom. Three nearby oil pools were discovered, real-estate activity surged, and the town gained electricity and an independent school district. Pampa's faster oil-driven growth still carried the 1928 special county-seat election. The Fort Worth and Denver line reached Lefors from Pampa in 1932. That sequence gives the town its sharpest turn: the tracks arrived four years after the courthouse left.