Editing Amherst, Texas (section)

==History==
Amherst, on [[U.S. Route 84]] and the [[BNSF Railway]] in west central Lamb County, began in 1913 as a Pecos and Northern Texas Railway station for William E. Halsell's Mashed O Ranch. A townsite was platted a mile from the Santa Fe depot in 1923 and named for [[Amherst College]] by a railroad official. The post office opened in 1924.<ref name=Handbook>{{cite web|url=https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hla15|title=Amherst, Texas (Lamb County)|work=Handbook of Texas Online|accessdate=12 March 2013|author=Hunt, William R. }}</ref> By 1930 thirty-five businesses and 964 people constituted a lively trade center, and amenities included a newspaper, the Amherst Argus. For many years the Amherst Hotel, the town's first permanent building, was the most popular stopping place between [[Clovis, New Mexico]] and [[Lubbock, Texas]]. The population in Amherst was 749 in 1940, when the first co-op hospital in Texas was built there. Incorporation came in 1970, when the population was 825. In 1980 the population was 971, and businesses included five cotton gins and two grain elevators. Sod House Spring Monument, commemorating the first cow camp in the area, is located {{convert|6|mi|0}} northwest of Amherst, and [[Plant X]], one of Southwestern Public Service's largest generating plants, is nine miles north.<ref name=Handbook/>