Stinnett, TX

Stinnett is the Hutchinson County seat in Texas’s northern Panhandle, at the junction of State Highways 152 and 207. It was established in 1926 as a shipping point on the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railway and named for Albert Sidney Stinnett, who helped secure the railroad right-of-way. A special election that same year moved the county seat from Plemons to Stinnett. The 2020 census counted 1,650 residents. Oil, natural gas, grain, ranching, and the railroad all shaped the town’s first decades.

The 1927 Hutchinson County Courthouse still stands on the courthouse square, a Spanish Renaissance building financed during the petroleum boom; its stone friezes show oil, farming, ranching, and cattle. Plemons-Stinnett-Phillips Consolidated Independent School District serves the city, carrying forward a school system that began during the town’s founding year. An 1899 cottage associated with early settler Isaac McCormick became a museum on the square. Stinnett has lived through an oil boom, the Dust Bowl, and long population swings while keeping its county offices, school, courthouse, and Panhandle highway connections together.