Albany, TX

At the 2020 census, Albany was a Shackelford County city and county seat of 1,854 people, founded in 1873 and named by county clerk William Cruger for his former home of Albany, Georgia. Its early fortunes were tied to Fort Griffin, the 1867 frontier post sixteen miles north, and to the cattle traffic that moved through the Clear Fork country. When Fort Griffin faded, Albany kept the regional role, with a courthouse square of limestone buildings and a school district serving the county seat.

Albany's signature tradition is the Fort Griffin Fandangle, a musical pageant that grew out of an Albany High School senior play in 1938. Each June, local performers bring out horses, wagons, longhorn cattle, a stagecoach, a train, and the old frontier cast of characters at the Prairie Theater. The Old Jail Art Center gives the town an indoor counterpoint, while Lt. Col. William Edwin Dyess connects Albany to the air base that bears his name near Abilene. Albany is a county-seat town that keeps its history onstage, in limestone, and in the name of a wartime pilot.