Earth Day 4/22

Tomorrow is Earth day and having just passed through Earth on the way to Plainview, I thought it would be fun to point to a web page with a bit of Earth's history . That is the history of Earth, Texas.

Here's a link to a column by Mike Cox and his "Texas Tales":   Earth

If you don't have all the time on Earth to read the fun history, here's a quick excerpt from that page:

Researchers have un-earthed at least four versions of how a point in a rural High Plains county became Earth:

The first settlers wanted to call the new town Tulsa, but the U.S. Post Office quickly took them back to Tulsa as a bad choice, since such a town already existed in Oklahoma.

Halsell supposedly called his town Fairlawn (some say Fairlene), but the frequent blowing dirt inspired someone to come up with Earth.

Another tale has R.C. “Daddy” Reeves, who operated the new town’s hotel, declaring: “We’ve got more earth here than anything else, let’s call it Earth.”

A final version has Halsell, wanting to emphasize the fertile soil around his town, came up with Good Earth. Washington, this tale holds, did away with “Good” and made the place plain old Earth.

While accounts vary as to how Earth, Texas got its worldly name, you can take to the soil bank that Earth is the only place in the United States called Earth. (There’s Black Earth, Wisc., Blue Earth, Minn., White Earth, Minn. and Md., Earth City, Mo and Middle Earth, Md. but that’s as close as it gets.) Neither does a global search reveal another Earth anywhere on Earth.

Someone seemingly with all the time on Earth has also discovered that in addition to Earth, the state of Texas has a small solar system of other towns named after the planets swirling around our sun. Beyond Earth, Texas’ extraterrestrial town names include Mercury, Mars, Saturn and Pluto. Several states have Venus, Jupiter and Neptune as town names, though no state has chosen to honor Uranus.

But to get back to Earth, despite its all-encompassing name, it’s a pretty down-to-Earth community, a rural agricultural center whose principle landmark is a shiny silver-colored water tower with the green (as in “God’s green Earth”) letters E-A-R-T-H painted on its tank.