After passing by wheat fields and ranch lands, then negotiating a verdant allée of foliage, you arrive at medium-sized, agreeable Perryton (pop. 7,607), seven miles south of the Oklahoma border. The town was formed in 1919 when the Santa Fe Railroad came through; people in nearby towns simply picked up their stuff—buildings included—and shifted them here. Ochilton, eight miles south off US-83/Hwy-70, was one such town, before some 600 people moved the whole infrastructure. If you ignore the industrial oil-well litter on the outskirts, Perryton’s not bad-looking, with spacious, tree-lined streets. The self-styled “Wheatheart of the Nation,” Perryton is also the hometown of Mike Hargrove, former American League Rookie of the Year and later manager of the Cleveland Indians.
South from Perryton, the landscape changes radically from the plains stretches, offering instead classic ranches with miles of fencing and great white gates à la Dallas, a few oil wells, small canyons with innumerable creekbeds, and craggy, fluted bluffs peppered with veldtlike vegetation.
