Biohazard Cleanup Near Dix Stanton, TX

Stanton is a small city and the county seat of Martin County in West Texas, located on Interstate 20 about halfway between Midland and Big Spring, roughly 100 miles south of Lubbock.

Stanton began in 1881 as Grelton, a stop where the Texas and Pacific Railway built a section house, pump, and water tank.

German Catholic settlers, led by Carmelite priests, renamed the town Marienfeld — German for 'Field of Mary' — in 1885, making Stanton one of the earliest centers of Catholicism in West Texas; the Carmelite monastery built in 1884 had adobe walls three feet thick.

Formal education in Stanton began with a Catholic school in 1882, and the 1882 Connell House, built for Carmelite priests, is considered the first building raised in the town and is now held by the Martin County Historical Museum.

In 1890 the town was renamed Stanton in honor of Edwin M. Stanton, Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of War, and it was incorporated in 1925 with S. C. 'Tink' Houston as its first mayor.

Cotton farming and ranching drove Stanton's economy until 1951, when the Stanton oilfield went into production and brought an oil boom to the town.

Stanton had 2,657 residents at the 2020 census, with a median age of 34.4 years; it covers only about 1.8 square miles.

Stanton is famous across Texas for the welcome signs on each side of town proclaiming it the 'Home of 3,000 Friendly People and a Few Old Soreheads.'

Playing on that slogan, Stanton hosts Old Sorehead Trade Days several weekends a year in its historic downtown, drawing more than 600 vendor booths and tens of thousands of visitors — many times the town's own population.

The current Martin County Courthouse in Stanton, built in 1975, is the county's third; a dozen columns salvaged from the 1908 courthouse were reused to build a gazebo on the courthouse grounds.