Grayback
Grayback is on Farm Road 1763 just south of its junction with
Farm Road 1811, fifteen miles southeast of Vernon in south central
Wilbarger County.
Much of the nearby land was bought up by the
Waggoner Ranch during the 1880s, when settlement began in the area. Local oil
discoveries about 1920 produced a regional boom, prompting oilmen
to establish the Grayback post office near Beaver Creek. The community's
population reached a reported peak of fifty during the 1950s before
leveling off to twenty-five. The Grayback post office was discontinued
in the mid-1950s.
This rural community was sometimes referred to
as Rock Crossing, a now-extinct oil community located several
miles east of Grayback. The Phillips Petroleum Company had a camp
at that site and built several houses for employees there in the
mid-1920s. A school founded there about 1927 lasted for a short
time.
County maps made in the 1980s did not show the Rock Crossing
community but indicated two businesses, a church, and a community
center at Grayback, where the population was still reported as
twenty-five through 2000.
Source: Wilbarger County Historical Commission,
Wilbarger County (Lubbock, 1986).