Blood & Biohazard Cleanup Near Plainview Historic District Plainview, TX

Plainview is the county seat of Hale County, sitting on the High Plains of West Texas at an elevation of about 3,366 feet, roughly 47 miles north of Lubbock.

Plainview began on March 18, 1887, when Z. T. Maxwell and Edwin Lowden Lowe established a post office there - the town took its name from the vast, treeless plain stretching out around it.

Plainview became the Hale County seat in August 1888, when the county was organized, and its first courthouse was built for $2,500.

The railroad reached Plainview in 1906 and set off an agricultural boom - the city incorporated in 1907, and by 1910 it had nearly 3,000 residents and the nickname "Athens of West Texas."

Plainview's population was 20,187 at the 2020 census, making it by far the largest city in Hale County.

Plainview has about 7,160 households, and only about 53% of its homes are owner-occupied - a low rate that reflects its large renter and farmworker population - with a median home value of about $113,000, according to Census QuickFacts.

Plainview is home to Wayland Baptist University, chartered in 1908 and opened in 1910, which is the oldest institution of higher education in continuous existence on the High Plains of Texas.

The Llano Estacado Museum, which opened on July 4, 1976, stands on the Wayland Baptist University campus and documents the history and archaeology of the South Plains.

Country singer Jimmy Dean founded his sausage company in Plainview in 1969, and food processing has been a mainstay of the local economy ever since.

The Plainview Site, an archaeological locality discovered in 1944, yielded the remains of about 100 extinct bison - animals roughly twice the size of modern bison - alongside ancient human artifacts.