Discreet Biohazard Cleanup Near North Idalou Idalou, TX

Idalou is a city in Lubbock County located seven miles northeast of Lubbock at Farm to Market Road 400 and the combined U.S. 62/82 and State Highway 114, and it is part of the Lubbock metropolitan area.

Idalou began in the early 1910s as a settlement around a depot on the South Plains and Santa Fe Railway, and its first post office opened in 1917.

Idalou was named for Ida and Lou Bassett, sisters of Julian M. Bassett, vice president of the Crosby-Bassett Livestock Company.

After the original one-room schoolhouse burned, a two-story brick school was built in Idalou in 1919, and the town incorporated in 1925 with 538 residents.

The 2020 census counted 2,193 people in Idalou in 823 households, just below its 1980 peak of 2,348 residents.

Idalou covers only about one square mile of the High Plains at an elevation of 3,192 feet.

Idalou serves as an agricultural center for cotton farming in northeastern Lubbock County, with a co-op cotton gin among its anchor businesses, though many residents commute to nearby Lubbock for work.

The town's amenities include a city park and swimming pool, a public library, an EMS station and a fire department - a full set of services for a community of its size.

About 43.7 percent of Idalou residents were Hispanic or Latino in the 2020 census.

Idalou is name-checked in Terry Allen's 1979 song 'Amarillo Highway' ('a side bet in Idalou') and is the title of a 2012 song by the Josh Abbott Band.