Tarzan Took Shape Around a Two-Room School and a Store

Tarzan got its center before it got its name. J. B. McNerlin was the first settler in the area. In 1925, a two-room school was built, and Tant Lindsay soon added a store. Those two buildings became the center of the community.

Two years later, Lindsay sent the Post Office Department a list of possible names. Postal officials selected Tarzan and made him the first postmaster. The schoolhouse did extra duty as a meeting place for Baptist and Church of Christ congregations. The Baptists built their own church in 1937; the Church of Christ followed after World War II.

The road changed Tarzan's rhythm. Around 1938, word came that a highway from Big Spring to Andrews would pass through the community, and J. T. Glaze promptly built a grocery and gas station. After World War II, local farmers formed the Tarzan Marketing Association, and the gin became a cooperative in 1976. Oil discoveries in Martin County during the 1950s added another industry, leaving the community that began around a school and store among both cotton fields and oil wells.