Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Sundown Sundown, TX

Sundown is a small city in southwestern Hockley County, Texas, laid out in 1928 on land that was originally part of the vast C. C. Slaughter Ranch.

Ranch heir Bob Slaughter is said to have named the town after a favorite movie, although old-timers claimed the settlers' naming discussion simply lasted until sundown.

A Sundown school district was established in 1928, the same year the town was laid out, and the town's first store opened in 1929.

Oil transformed Sundown after Hockley County's first producing well was completed south of town on April 6, 1937, flowing 502 barrels a day from the giant Slaughter field.

The oil boom earned Sundown the nickname 'Boomtown, USA' and made it famous as the small town with the long main street, a strip about two and a half miles long.

Sundown incorporated in 1947, and two years later a tornado ravaged the town, killing or injuring twenty people and causing heavy property damage.

The 2020 census counted 1,283 residents in Sundown living in 443 households, down from 1,397 residents in 2010.

Sundown covers only about 1.5 square miles of the South Plains at the junction of Farm Roads 301 and 303, about fifteen miles southwest of Levelland, the Hockley County seat.

Sundown maintains a museum exhibiting mementos of its oilfield development, including oil paintings depicting the early boom days.