Phillips Camp

Sher-Han was an industrial camp in northwestern Hansford County near the Oklahoma border. Originally this community was composed of three separate camps constructed during World War II for employees of the Phillips Petroleum Company, the Panhandle Eastern Pipeline Company, and the Michigan Wisconsin Pipe Line Company. Since the site was in a remote location with no paved roads, low-rent housing was provided by the companies for their employees working at the Phillips gasoline compressor stations. Most of the houses were erected between 1944 and 1949.

The name Sher-Han was derived from the Phillips Hansford natural gas liquids extraction plant, which started up in December 1944, and its Sherman plant, which began operation in 1949. At first the camps and facilities they served were planned to be closer to Guymon, Oklahoma, since they took gas from the Hugoton field, but they were instead placed south of the state line to take advantage of cheaper property tax rates in Texas. Two school buses carried children to and from schools in Guymon, and later in Gruver, Texas, after roads were completed from that town. At its peak the Phillips camp contained more than 300 residents and eighty-five houses, eleven of which were occupied by supervisors. The two pipeline company camps had twenty-eight housing units. There was also a grocery store, a small general store that sold gasoline, a Baptist church, and a community center. A ball park, tennis courts, and a nine-hole golf course provided recreation. In 1957–58 twenty-five houses were erected for the Texas Booster Station. In 1962 Phillips built a helium extraction plant near Sher-Han and in 1978 added an ethane plant to the complex.