Happy is named for a draw where cowboys were glad to find water. Today the question around town runs the other way: how to move water off a homesite on ground that barely tilts.
Tell us what the water is doing and we’ll call you back to set up a free on-site look.
Happy is named for a draw where cowboys were glad to find water. Today the question around town runs the other way: how to move water off a homesite on ground that barely tilts.
The Handbook of Texas says Happy Draw got its name from cowboys on cattle drives who were happy to find its spring-fed stream. The draw rises in southern Randall County, runs southeast near Happy, then turns northeast for about twenty-one miles across northern Swisher County to meet the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River in Armstrong County.
Hugh Currie set up a homestead and post office on the trail by the draw in 1891. When the Santa Fe built south from Canyon in 1906 it bypassed that spot, and promoters laid out a new town beside the tracks two miles to the west. That's the Happy you know, incorporated in 1925, on U.S. Highway 87 in northern Swisher County.
The Handbook describes Swisher County as level plains broken only by Tule Creek and its three branches, intermittent draws that barely touch the terrain until they converge in the eastern part of the county. Elevations range from about 3,000 to 3,600 feet, and the county averages roughly 19 inches of rain a year.
Level is a fine word for a wheat field and a hard one for a house. When the ground around your home has almost no tilt, a few inches of settled soil along the foundation or a driveway poured a bit high is enough to hold water against the wall. Before anything else, we put a level on the grade and find out how much fall the lot actually has.
The full range of fixes, chosen for what your lot is actually doing — start with why yards here hold water:
Pullman is one of the clay soils the NRCS documents across this part of the High Plains, and its official description lists laboratory sample pedons taken from Swisher County. The series is slowly permeable, rates runoff as medium on slopes under 1 percent and high on 1 to 3 percent, and shows secondary carbonates starting about 20 to 30 inches down.
Slow permeability plus that much runoff adds up to sheet flow: water that can't sink in moves across the surface until it finds the lowest point. On a farmstead that point might be the shop slab, the equipment yard or the back step. A surface drainage plan with swales and catch basins usually handles that better than a buried drain on its own.
Happy has always been a farm town. By 1940 two grain elevators made up the skyline, and the Handbook counts most of its 1984 businesses as farming-related. Many properties here pair a house with outbuildings and working ground, so a drainage plan has to account for more than one roof and more than one slab.
Equipment traffic matters too. Ruts left by trucks and trailers turn into channels that steer water toward whatever sits downhill, and a drain we install has to survive being driven across. Where a line crosses a drive or work area, we plan the grate and pipe for that load and route around it where we can.
Happy calls itself 'the town without a frown,' and a yard that stays dry after a storm helps keep it that way. Call (806) 606-0904 and ask for a no-cost, no-obligation on-site assessment in Happy; we'll get back to you to arrange the visit. We also work north in Canyon and south in Tulia.
Free on-site drainage assessments in Happy and across the Panhandle. Call or send the form and we’ll set up a time to look.