24/7 Trauma & Biohazard Cleanup Near West Lamesa Lamesa, TX

Lamesa (pronounced lə-MEE-sə) is the county seat of Dawson County, founded in 1903 on the flat tableland of the Llano Estacado — the "Staked Plains" — south of Lubbock, a landscape echoed in the name of its downtown Dal Paso Museum, housed in a former hotel.

Lamesa's economy is built on cotton farming across the South Plains, and its population peaked at 12,438 in 1960 before settling at 8,674 at the 2020 census.

In 2011 Governor Rick Perry officially proclaimed Lamesa the home of the chicken-fried steak, and the city celebrates with an annual Chicken Fried Steak Festival held the last weekend of April — even though the reporter who first dubbed it the dish's birthplace later admitted the claim was invented.

Lamesa's Sky-Vue Drive-In Theater, open from 1948 until a fire destroyed its snack bar in November 2015, was one of only about 14 drive-ins left in Texas and was famous for its "Chihuahua" sandwich — a young Buddy Holly once performed on the roof of its projection building before he became famous.

Each graduating class of Lamesa High School paints its seniors' names on "The Wall," a brick wall on South 2nd Street, layering new graffiti over the classes that came before.

Lamesa is the legally defined northern terminus of La Entrada al Pacifico, an international trade corridor that runs from the Mexican Pacific port of Topolobampo through Midland-Odessa to Lamesa.

Lamesa has a semiarid climate with hot summers that frequently top 100 °F, yet its average annual temperature of about 61 °F makes it one of the coldest places in Texas, with temperatures dropping below freezing on an average of 91 nights a year and only about 17.6 inches of annual rainfall.

Lamesa had 3,307 households at the 2020 census, and about 63% of its residents identified as Hispanic or Latino.

Students attend Lamesa Independent School District schools, including Lamesa High School — home of the Golden Tornadoes — and a branch campus of Howard College, the Big Spring-based community college, operates in the city.

The Preston E. Smith Unit, a state prison named for a former Texas governor, sits just outside Lamesa.