Midway

Midway is on Farm Road 178 twelve miles southeast of Lamesa in southeastern Dawson County. It was probably named for its location midway between two schools, Mount Olive and Mullins. In 1907 inhabitants of the Mullins school area formed the Bethany Baptist Church. In 1912 residents of the Mount Olive area, five miles west, joined that church. They ultimately reorganized as the Midway Baptist Church, and built a church building in 1923 on the site of the Midway community. Soon thereafter a gin was built there, and a general store was opened in 1924. At different times Midway had a filling station, a blacksmith shop, a barbershop, a washateria, and a cafe. By 1933 the community consisted of three businesses and a population of ten, and in 1940 it had three businesses, a church, a cemetery, and scattered dwellings. During the 1940s and 1950s the population was reported as forty. In 1939 a parsonage was begun for the church, and in 1949 a new brick church was built. Midway boomed in the early 1960s, perhaps because of extensive oil drilling in the area, and its population rose to a high of 350 in 1961. It had declined to thirty by 1968, and it was estimated at twenty from 1974 through 2000.