[4] The Plains Apache inhabited the Texas Panhandle until they were displaced by the Comanche who dominated the area until the 1870s.

In the Red River War of 1874–75, United States Army troops led by Ranald S. Mackenzie drove out the Comanches.

Simultaneously, buffalo hunters killed the large herds in the area, destroying the food supply and livelihood of the Plains tribes, making way for permanent settlement by Anglo-Americans.

In 1876, Roberts County was carved from the Bexar Territory and the Clay Land District.

The county contains the 68,000-acre (280 km2) Mesa Vista Ranch, which seeks to protect quail, dove, and pheasant habitat along the creek beds south of the Canadian River.

The last Democrat to win the county in a presidential election was Harry S. Truman in 1948, when he carried nearly 76% of its ballots.

No Democrat has since exceeded the 40% of the vote that Texas native Lyndon B. Johnson won in the county in his 1964 national landslide.

[19][20][21] Roberts was again Trump's strongest county in 2020, and he won it by an even stronger margin: 96.2%.