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

Ropesville is a small city in the southeastern corner of Hockley County, Texas, sitting on the high plains of the Llano Estacado at an elevation of 3,363 feet along U.S. Highways 62 and 82, about 21 miles from Lubbock.

Ropesville was the very first settlement in Hockley County, founded when the Spade Ranch opened its land for colonization and homesteaders led by Jim Jarrott began arriving in 1901.

The town got its name because Spade Ranch cowboys built rope corrals to pen cattle for shipment and wanted to call the depot "Ropes" — postal officials rejected that as too similar to another Texas settlement called Ropers, so "Ropesville" was submitted and accepted instead.

The Ropesville townsite was laid out in 1917, the same year the Ropes school district was established, and its post office opened in 1920 with general-store owner J. R. Evans as the first postmaster.

Ropesville was a string of county firsts: its First Baptist Church, organized in 1921, was the first church organized in Hockley County, and its First State Bank, organized on November 21, 1924, was the county's first bank.

During the Great Depression, Ropesville became the site of a federal resettlement project begun in 1934 under Franklin D. Roosevelt's relief programs, which divided more than 16,000 acres into about eighty-one farms of 140 to 160 acres each for struggling farm families.

The town's first newspaper, the Ropesville Hustler, began publishing in 1926, and Ropesville's original railroad depot — still lettered "Ropes" — was later moved to Lubbock, where it is preserved at the National Ranching Heritage Center.

Ropesville peaked at 950 residents and forty-eight businesses in 1965, but the 2020 census counted just 430 people living in 150 households, with a median age of 41 and about 58 percent of residents identifying as Hispanic or Latino.

The entire city of Ropesville covers only about 0.36 square miles, making it one of the most compact incorporated cities on the South Plains.

Local students attend the Ropes Independent School District, where the Ropes High School teams compete as the Eagles.