Moore County 4H
Moore County, located north of Amarillo in the Northwestern part of the Texas Panhandle, has an area of 912 square miles. Moore County was created in 1876 and organized in 1892. The county was named after Commodore Edwin Moore, who commanded the Texas Navy. The county was created by an act of the State Legislature on August 21, 1876, from parts of Young and Bexar Counties. Its county seat is Dumas, which is the agribusiness center of the county. Land uses in Moore County are divided between crops and pasture. Major agricultural commodities grown are corn, wheat, sorghum and grazing cattle. Natural gas and oil have been very influential in the development of industry to process and utilize these fuels. Irrigation has resulted in Moore County becoming one of the higher agricultural producing counties in Texas.
Recreation in Moore County includes eleven city parks, two swimming pools and Lake Meredith, with over 200 miles of shoreline. There are opportunities for antelope, mule deer, dove and pheasant hunting.
Demographically, Moore County showed greater than twelve percent positive change in population from 1990 to 2000. In 1996, its population was 19,306 and the census of 2000 showed a population of 20,121. The most recent data indicates that Moore County ranks 116th in the state suggesting that this is a rural region. However, Moore County is predominantly urban with seventy-two percent urban and twenty-eight percent rural. We anticipate these percentages to become more skewed toward urban centers in the next decade. The largest age-group in the county is 30 to 49. The majority of the population is Anglos followed by Hispanics, according to the 2000 census.
Moore County per capita personal income (PCPI) in 2000 was $22,475, a forty-one percent increase from the 1996 census report. The 1996 census information ranked Moore County 68th in the state and was eighty-nine percent of the state average of $22,324 and eighty-one percent of the national average of $24,436. In 1986, the PCPI of Moore County was 13,555. The average annual growth rate of PCPI during that ten year period was 3.9 percent.
Moore County, like other Texas counties, is developing a strong educational system and economy for it’s citizens as we move through the 21st century. For more information about Moore County, or any of Texas’ 254 counties, you can access the following websites:
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Additional information can be found in an article entitlae ‘Understanding Your Local Economy…County Data Set’ by Drs. Dennis U. Fisher and Judith I. Stallman, Department of Agricultural Economics, 340 Blocker Building, College Station, Texas 77834-2124.
