[4] Plainview began when Z. T. Maxwell and Edwin Lowden Lowe established a post office on March 18, 1887.

[8] In 1906, the Pecos and Northern Texas Railway reached Plainview, initiating an agricultural boom in the region.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 13.895 square miles (35.99 km2), all land.

In 2009, the Texas Department of State Health Services ordered the recall of all products produced by a processing facility near Plainview owned by Peanut Corporation of America.

[20] A Cargill beef processing plant, then the largest employer in the city, closed in 2013 due to lack of incoming animals, a result of the 2010–2012 drought.

[23] The city is served by the Plainview Independent School District, which enrolled 5,585 students as of 2018[update].

The mascot for the Plainview High School is a grey English Bulldog nicknamed "Big Red".

The Museum of the Llano Estacado, now the Mabee Regional Heritage Center, opened in 1976, is located on the university grounds.

[27] The Mabee Regional Heritage Center includes the Jimmy Dean, Llano of the Estacado and Flying Queens museums.

It is among the oldest newspapers in Texas still in publication, and became fully computer paginated in 1994, the same year it began publishing an online edition.

Due to the terrain, television stations based in Amarillo can be received over-the-air, either directly or via repeaters north of the city.

Prior to 1993, virtually all stations broadcast from Lubbock and Amarillo markets were retransmitted by the local cable operator.

After changes were made to must-carry rules by the Federal Communications Commission, only stations from Lubbock are available to cable and digital satellite customers in the city.

Until 2016, a water tower east of downtown bore the name and mascot of the fictional town on which the movie was set: Rustwater Bengals.

[28] The documentary featured numerous locations, many of which had been closed or abandoned for years prior, as examples of recent rural flight following a drought.

The documentary followed the template of a similar short, "Dry and Drier in West Texas", which was broadcast on Showtime.