Looking at the paper from 1908 it was clear Plainview was growing quite a bit.
I mentioned The O.K. Ranch, but one thing I left out was that two entrepreneurs, Shafer and Harris, would turn a place called Bain Hall into a theater. The only question is, where was Bain Hall?
This is an issue that often comes up whenever you’re looking through old papers, documents, etc. I’m sure everyone in Plainview knew where Bain Hall was in 1908, and O.K. Stables, for that matter. However, it’s no longer 1908, it’s 2026 and I have no clue where these places were because it’s never explicitly said. I even managed to find a map from 1910 and even that didn’t have Bain Hall listed anywhere. Instead, the was a different theater that apparently opened within those two years!
This isn’t just a problem for old papers. If you look at a story that mentions Lubbock, most likely it says something along the lines of “In Lubbock…” not “In Lubbock, located in Lubbock county X miles away from the Texas-New Mexico boarder in the United States of America…” because there’s no point in writing all of that… at the moment.
In 3,000 years if Lubbock isn’t around anymore, someone who reads that story is going to be really confused about where it was.