Region: Panhandle Plains
This city was established in the middle of a night in May 1901, when Sherman County records were moved from the former county seat at Coldwater to land owned by Walter Colton along the new Rock Island Railroad route. Texas Rangers were called to settle the dispute over the location of the county seat. Coldwater has disappeared. There also is a dispute over the origin of the city name; Colton, an Englishman, either named it for Stratford-on-Avon or for the Virginia plantation birthplace of Robert E. Lee, whom he admired.