OPDYKE, TEXAS. Opdyke (pronounced "O. P. Dike") is just west of the intersection of State Highway 114 and Farm Road 2646, five miles east of Levelland in central Hockley County. The town was named either for Charles W. Opdyke, an early director of the Santa Fe railroad line, or for a family member of W. A. Dykes, who by 1937 had established the first gin at the community. The settlement was begun in 1925 as a shipping point for the railroad and grew to a population of about fifty by 1945. During the 1940s and 1950s it had the gin and a combination service station-general store. The Opdyke Farmers Co-op Gin was organized on May 26, 1958, and by the mid-1980s was the only business remaining and had some fifty to sixty members. Several residences, mostly housing for the gin's employers, were nearby. The population of Opdyke was twenty in 1990.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Lillian Brasher, Hockley County (2 vols., Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains, 1976).

Charles G. Davis