General Info

Plains Dairy and its hometown, Amarillo, have a lot in common. Both were established to meet the demand for a central entity that could regularly deliver products and services needed by an emerging population of pioneers settling over the Southwest. The Texas Panhandle was raw rangeland when Col. Charles Goodnight drove the first cattle to the famous JA Ranch along Palo Duro Canyon. That was near the time railroad companies built crossings in the central Panhandle and settlers staked claims. In 1887, Amarillo officially became a town. As families moved to the new frontier community, visionary rancher and businessman Henry S. Sanborn built the Amarillo Hotel. Appropriately, it was painted yellow by the man known as the Father of Amarillo. The city was named the Potter County seat in 1893. Between 1892 and 1897, the Fort Worth and Denver railroad shipped some 100,000 cattle from the growing city. History says that more cattle were shipped from Amarillo that any other rural point in the United States.