Pampa got its name because the land reminded a ranch manager of the grasslands of Argentina. Ground that flat is easy to build a town on and slow to shed a thunderstorm.
Tell us what the water is doing and we’ll call you back to set up a free on-site look.
Pampa got its name because the land reminded a ranch manager of the grasslands of Argentina. Ground that flat is easy to build a town on and slow to shed a thunderstorm.
When railroad officials wanted a new name for the Sutton station, White Deer Land Company manager George Tyng suggested Pampa, because the place resembled the pampas of Argentina he had once visited. The name stuck, and so did the description.
The Handbook of Texas divides Gray County into two parts: flat plains in the west and north, and Red River breaks across the east, center and southeast. Pampa, the county seat, is in the northwestern corner -- the flat side. Forecasters at the Amarillo weather service office point out that the Caprock escarpment begins in Gray County and runs more than 200 miles south-southwest, separating the high, flat plains from the lower rolling country to the east.
The Handbook lists the county's soils as sandy loams and black waxy soils. The sandy end of that range takes water in reasonably well. The heavier, clay end is the problem: it absorbs slowly, so a hard rain stacks up on the surface faster than the ground can drink it.
Gray County averages about 20 inches of rain a year. That isn't much on paper, but on level ground with tight soil, an inch in an hour behaves very differently from an inch spread over a week. The first kind is what floods a flowerbed against your foundation.
The full range of fixes, chosen for what your lot is actually doing — start with why yards here hold water:
Pampa's population roughly doubled between 1941 and 1960, from about 12,900 to about 24,700. World War II brought Pampa Army Air Field and the families of servicemen, and the carbon, chemical and oil plants that followed kept people coming. The Handbook credits local real estate men with relieving the postwar housing shortage in a hurry.
If your house went up in that stretch, its original grading has had seventy-plus years to settle, get buried under raised beds, or get reversed by a newer driveway or slab. On a lot with almost no natural fall, a few inches of lost slope is the difference between water draining to the street and water sitting by the back door.
The older core of town goes back further still. Oil was discovered in 1926, Cabot opened the first carbon black plant at Pampa in 1927, and by 1931 the town counted about 10,470 residents and 430 businesses. If your house dates from that first oil decade, check whether it has gutters at all, and whether the downspouts empty straight onto the foundation line.
We start with a level and a tape, not a sales pitch. Where do the downspouts empty? Which corner is actually lowest? Is there enough fall from the house to the street or alley to move water by gravity at all?
When there is, grading and surface drainage -- catch basins, a channel drain across a patio, buried downspout lines -- usually solve it. When the lot is truly dead level, a sump may be the only honest answer, and we'll tell you so.
Pampa is about sixty miles northeast of Amarillo on U.S. 60, and we treat it as part of the wider Panhandle we cover, along with towns like Borger. We don't keep an office in Gray County. Phone (806) 606-0904 about your Pampa property; we'll return the call and schedule a free look at the lot, and you're not committing to anything.
Free on-site drainage assessments in Pampa and across the Panhandle. Call or send the form and we’ll set up a time to look.