Hadacol Corner

Midkiff is on Farm roads 3095 and 2401 some 1½ miles south of the Midland county line in the northeastern corner of Upton County. In 1950 oil was discovered in the Spraberry Trend in northeastern Upton County. What was to become the Midkiff community was born in the boom that followed. The place was originally called Hadacol Corner, but when application was made for a post office, that name was not accepted by the postal department. The name Midkiff was adopted from an earlier and nearby Midland County community that had been abandoned by the 1950s. The original Midkiff was named for the early ranching family of John Rufus Midkiff. In September 1952 a post office opened in the Upton County Midkiff with W. L. Williams as postmaster. Throughout the 1950s the small community reported a population of twenty and anywhere from one to seven businesses. Midkiff in the 1960s had three churches, some forty other structures, and a population of seventy-five, growing to eighty-four by 1968, when the town reported nine businesses. Its population declined to seventy-five by 1972 and to sixty-eight by 1974, when it reported three businesses. The Texas Almanac reported its 1990 population as sixty-eight. By the early 1990s Midkiff, still an agricultural and petroleum-related community, had grown to some 122 homes, twenty businesses, and two churches. In 2000 the population was ninety-eight with nineteen businesses.