Plemons Lost the County Seat When the Railroad Passed It By

Plemons began with a dugout above a bend in the Canadian River. Rancher James A. Whittenburg settled there around 1898, and voters chose the little river-crossing town as Hutchinson County's seat when the county organized in 1901. A courthouse, school, post office, and road toward Dumas followed.

By 1905, roughly 15 families had built a small but recognizable county town. Plemons had a wagon yard, barbershop, doctor's office, drugstore, and mercantile. William "Billy" Dixon, a former buffalo hunter and scout who became the county's sheriff, ran a hotel with his family for three years. Government, trade, and a place to sleep all fit into a very small settlement.

Then transportation redrew the map. The Rock Island line reached the area in 1926 but stopped at Stinnett instead of Plemons. Voters moved the county seat to the railroad town that year, and Plemons began a long decline. The oil boom kept it going for another two decades, but the cemetery became its lasting record. Its 66 graves hold an unusually clear lesson: a county seat could have a courthouse and local businesses, then lose its future when the tracks went somewhere else.