The town within the town. Lubbock's oldest residents may be its smallest: at Mackenzie Park sits Prairie Dog Town, one of the first protected prairie-dog colonies anywhere, established in the 1930s when a Lubbock couple decided the disappearing plains icon deserved a permanent address. The colony has been barking at visitors ever since — a few acres of the original High Plains, holding out cheerfully in the middle of the Hub City.
The city is named for Colonel Thomas Saltus Lubbock, Texas Ranger and brother of a Texas governor; it incorporated as a city on March 16, 1909.
Why People Visit Lubbock Texas
Lubbock is the heartland-pride heart of West Texas: the Hub City of the South Plains, the commercial heart of the world's largest contiguous cotton-growing region, a town founded in 1890 when two rivals chose to become one. It offers the world's largest windmill collection, the deep ranching archive of the National Ranching Heritage Center, the 10,000-year human record at the Lubbock Lake Landmark, the railroad-era Depot District, the canyon parks of Yellow House Canyon, and a West Texas music heritage that helped shape American rock and roll — all under the wide flat sky of the Llano Estacado. It feels spacious, sunny, and grounded, where cotton country, university life, and plains heritage sit side by side. Hub City. Cotton country. West Texas, wide open.
