Texas Elf Co. Settlement

Elfco was on the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway three miles southeast of downtown Pampa in northwestern Gray County. It was the site of the Texas Elf Company carbon black plant, established during the 1930s. The company erected several houses near the plant for its employees. A county highway map for the 1940s shows Elfco as fourteen dwellings along dirt roads and the railway, on the edge of the Panhandle oilfield. The same map shows a second cluster of seventeen dwellings and one business, labeled "Texas Elf Company Settlement," a mile south of Elfco on a dirt road and a spur of the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway. Mail for Elfco was routed through Pampa. When local highways were improved, most of the plant employees were able to live in Pampa. After carbon black lost its importance in the petroleum industry during the late 1950s, the plant was abandoned and eventually dismantled (see CARBON BLACK INDUSTRY). Almost nothing remained at the site in the 1980s.