The story
Toyah — from an Indian word for 'flowing water,' after the artesian springs nearby — began around 1879 as a trading post for the ranch country and boomed when the Texas and Pacific Railway laid tracks through Reeves County in 1880–81. At its height it was a cattle-shipping and railroad town of banks, hotels, churches, and saloons, with a population that reached perhaps 1,000 in the 1910s and 1920s.
Its decline came in stages. The railroad shifted its shipping business to a point closer to the ranches, a shallow oil field propped the town up for a while, and then the Great Depression pulled it down for good. The population fell decade after decade — 553 by 1930, 165 by 1980 — and a 2004 tornado flattened the old bank. The 2020 census counted 61 residents among the empty storefronts.
What remains today
Abandoned brick storefronts and the old school along the highway, scattered houses, and a still-standing but shrinking core beside the active rail line.
Questions from the field
- Does anyone still live in Toyah, Texas?
- Yes — the 2020 census counted 61 residents. Toyah is a near-ghost town of mostly abandoned buildings with a handful of occupied homes, not a fully deserted site.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Toyah — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Toyah's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 1370063
- — Texas State Historical Association — Handbook of Texas, 'Toyah, TX'
- — Legends of America — Toyah, Texas