Curlew

South Plains is on State Highway 207 and the Fort Worth and Denver Railway, four miles west of the Caprock escarpment in north central Floyd County. J. D. Childress established a store and post office in 1909 at Curlew, at a site one mile north and five miles east of present South Plains. It served as a stage stop. The post office was moved to the home of Mrs. J. W. Simms, three miles from the site of present South Plains, and was moved again in 1927 when the railroad arrived. A school was started in 1928 and was still operating in 1978. The original Curlew store was moved to South Plains in 1929. A hotel was built but burned down in 1934. Two hundred acres was platted and sold as town lots in 1927; some of these were sold for taxes in 1945. The Great Depression and World War II dislocations ended the community's fleeting prosperity. The population was 120 in 1980 and twenty-five in 1990. By 2000 the population was ninety-two.