Biohazard Cleanup Near West Anton Anton, TX

Anton was founded in 1924 in the middle of the Spade Ranch's north pasture, after ranch owner W. L. Ellwood sold off more than 200 farms and had the Anton Townsite Company plat a town at a railroad spur called Danforth Switch.

The town was named in honor of J. F. Anton, a Santa Fe railroad executive — even though the rail line through town was the Pecos and Northern Texas Railway.

At Anton's "Grand Opening Jubilee" on December 3, 1924, more than 200 town lots were sold in a single day despite a blinding sandstorm hitting the town.

Anton's first mayor, Paul Grover Whitfield, was only about 16 or 17 years old when the town was founded in 1924.

Anton once billed itself as the "Rabbit Capital of Texas" and had a large rabbit-processing plant, though the plant had closed by 1982.

The town was hit hard by the Dust Bowl in the 1930s and incorporated in the late 1930s, when it had about 400 people and twenty businesses.

Anton's population peaked at 1,368 in the 1960s, supported by grain, cotton, and later oil; the 2020 census counted 907 residents.

Anton sits on U.S. Highway 84 about 24 miles northwest of Lubbock in northeastern Hockley County, on the flat Llano Estacado of the South Plains.

The town supports its own high school, four churches, two parks, a bank, and a post office, and its former newspaper was the Anton Star.