Pampa, Texas | |
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City | |
Pampa business district
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Location of Pampa, Texas |
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Coordinates: 35°32′35″N 100°57′53″W / 35.54306°N 100.96472°WCoordinates: 35°32′35″N 100°57′53″W / 35.54306°N 100.96472°W | |
Country | United States |
State | Texas |
County | Gray |
Government | |
• Type | Council-Manager |
• City Council |
Mayor Brad Pingel John Studebaker Chris Porter Robert Dixon Karen McClain |
• City Manager | Richard Morris |
Area | |
• Total | 9.0 sq mi (23.2 km2) |
• Land | 9.0 sq mi (23.2 km2) |
• Water | 0.0 sq mi (0.0 km2) |
Elevation | 3,238 ft (987 m) |
Population (2010) | |
• Total | 17,994 |
• Density | 2,008/sq mi (775.4/km2) |
Time zone | Central (CST) (UTC-6) |
• Summer (DST) | CDT (UTC-5) |
ZIP codes | 79065-79066 |
Area code(s) | 806 |
FIPS code | 48-54912 |
GNIS feature ID | 1364740 |
Website | www |
Pampa is a city in Gray County, Texas, United States. The population was 17,994 as of the 2010 census. Pampa is the county seat of Gray County and is the principal city of the Pampa Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes both Gray and Roberts counties.
Pampa hosts the Top 'O Texas Rodeo each year in July, which brings competitors from Texas and the surrounding states to Gray County. The White Deer Land Company Museum, which showcases ranching exhibits, is located in downtown Pampa.
In 1888, the Santa Fe Railroad was constructed through the area where Pampa would be established. A rail station and telegraph office was built, and the townsite was laid out by George Tyng, manager of the White Deer Lands ranch. The town was first called "Glasgow", then "Sutton", and then the name was changed to "Pampa" after the pampas grasslands of South America at Mr. Tyng's suggestion. Timothy Dwight Hobart, a native of Vermont, sold plots of land for the town only to people who agreed to settle there and develop the land, and Pampa soon became a center for agriculture. Gas and oil were discovered in the Texas Panhandle in 1916. Pampa prospered greatly in the resulting oil boom, and the Gray County seat of government was moved in 1928 from Lefors to Pampa.
By the 1920s, Pampa was linked by rail to Hemphill County and Clinton, Oklahoma, through the combination of two similarly-named companies, the Clinton, Oklahoma, and Western Railroad Company and the Clinton-Oklahoma-Western Railroad Company of Texas. Both of these companies were soon leased and purchased by the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway, which held them until disestablishment in 1965.