Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Dumas, TX

Dumas is the county seat of Moore County in the Texas Panhandle, at the junction of U.S. Highways 87 and 287, about 48 miles north of Amarillo.

Dumas was named for Louis Dumas, president of the Panhandle Townsite Company, who formed the Moore County Townsite Company with his associates in January 1891 and platted the town about five miles south of South Palo Duro Creek; a post office opened the same year.

Moore County - named for Edwin Ward Moore, commander of the Texas Navy during the Republic of Texas - was organized on July 5, 1892, and Dumas was elected its county seat.

Dumas stayed tiny for decades on the windswept High Plains, with just 23 residents in 1903 and only about 100 by 1915, because the railroads long bypassed it - the railroad finally arrived in 1931 with the North Plains and Santa Fe line from Amarillo to Boise City, Oklahoma.

Oil and natural gas discovered in Moore County in 1926 transformed Dumas: the population reached 2,500 by 1935 despite the Dust Bowl, a zinc-smelting plant was established in 1936, and carbon black plants were built to use the sour gas from the oilfields.

Moore County produces large quantities of natural gas and, according to the Texas State Historical Association, about two-thirds of the nation's helium.

Dumas sits in the heart of one of Texas's leading grain sorghum producing areas, and its economy also runs on feedlots, grain elevators, beef packers, fertilizer plants, and petrochemical plants.

On July 29, 1956, a fire at the Shamrock-McKee plant near Dumas killed nine plant employees and ten firemen - the worst disaster in Moore County history.

Dumas was made famous by the hit song 'I'm a Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas,' written by Phil Baxter after he spent a night in the town on a trip to Denver and recorded by Phil Harris in the 1940s.

Local history is preserved at the Window on the Plains Museum on South Dumas Avenue, formerly the Moore County Historical Museum, which began in a former hotel.