Texas and Pacific Railway Depot
a.k.a. T&P Depot
100 Market St., Baird, TXThe Texas and Pacific Depot in Baird, Texas, was built in 1911 to replace an earlier passenger depot. The building's design incorporates elements of Prairie School, Renaissance Revival, and Mission Revival styles, with a plan that expresses the functional aspects of early 20th-century depot design, as well as the social aspects of race separation under Jim Crow laws. The depot stands as a good example of depot architecture and reflects the significance of the railroad in the establishment and development of Baird. The property is nominated to the National Register at the local level of significance in the area of Transportation, and Architecture.
Baird, Texas, was established in 1880 with the arrival of the Texas and Pacific (T&P) Railway and was named for railroad surveyor and engineer Matthew Baird. Train service from Fort Worth to Baird officially began on December 14, 1880. Serving as a division point along the main line, T&P railroad facilities in Baird included a depot, roundhouse, and repair shops. In the 1880s as cattle drives moved across Texas, railroads crossing the Great Western Cattle Trail carried millions of head of cattle to northern markets from Texas. Baird soon became an important cattle and cotton shipping point for the railroad. The T&P advertised nationally, offering cheap land around Baird and the area population steadily increased. In early April 1881, The Callahan County Clarendon, an early Callahan County newspaper, stated that Baird was to become the company's headquarters for immigration in northwest Texas. To aid in these efforts, the company would erect a large Immigrant House near the depot. In 1883, Baird became the county seat (replacing Belle Plain) and gained most of the former county seat's population. The population increased to 1,200 by the mid-1880s. A fire that started in S. L. Robinson's store, where the cast of Golden's Opera Company was preparing a show for the residents, did not stop the town's progress in 1884, nor did a tornado in 1895. The population was 1,502 in 1904 and peaked in 1929 at 3,000, then declined to 1,810 by 1941. By 2000 the population was 1,623. Industries have included gins, an oil refinery, flour mills, and a feed mill. The county hospital is in Baird, and the town is the center for local oilfield supplies and ranching.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 2012.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.