Editing Morton, Texas (section)

==History==
Famous [[cattle baron]] Christopher C. Slaughter died in 1919, and in 1921, his heirs dissolved his cattle company.<ref name=handbook>{{cite web| url= https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hgm08 | title= Morton, TX (Cochran County) |work= Handbook of Texas Online | access-date=March 9, 2013|author= Leoti A. Bennett}}</ref> Slaughter's eldest daughter, Minnie Slaughter Veal, hired an agent to sell her share of the property, and this agent—named Morton Smith—founded the town of Morton. In 1923, the townsite was platted, and Smith's land office was on the east side of the square.<ref name=handbook/> In 1924, Morton became the county seat over a town called Ligon.<ref name=handbook/> The Slaughters had founded Ligon and were hoping that it would become the county seat. Cochran County's western boundary is along the Texas–[[New Mexico]] border.

Ranches continued to be sold as farmland throughout the 1920s. According to the ''[[Handbook of Texas]]'', a family named Winder was so large that it doubled the population of Morton. Mrs. Mary Winder served as Morton's first postmistress (1924–1943). Since Cochran County was one of the last in the state to be broken out into farmland and settled, the motto for Morton became "The Last Frontier".

Morton was spared the fate of many Texas towns that shriveled and died after being bypassed by the railroad during the 1930s and 1940s. Morton being the county seat, plus having all that former rangeland newly broken out into farmland, attracted many new farming families to move in during that time, and helped Morton not only survive, but also to grow and thrive.<ref name=handbook/>

In 1933, Morton was incorporated, with Henry Cox as the town's first mayor.<ref name=handbook/>

Morton was the hometown of [[Lieutenant colonel (United States)|Lt. Col.]] [[George Andrew Davis Jr.|George Andrew Davis, Jr.]], a [[World War II]] ace who was killed in the [[Korean War]].