Stamford is a city on the border of Jones and Haskell counties in west-central Texas, United States.

[3] Henry McHarg, president of the Texas Central Railroad, named the site in 1900 for his hometown of Stamford, Connecticut.

While the town was named by Henry King McHarg for Stamford, Connecticut, the townsite was donated by the family of Swante Magnus Swenson.

Swante M. Swenson is largely responsible for initiating and supporting Swedish immigration to Texas, starting in 1847.

Mr. Swenson assisted Swedish immigrants with the cost of their passage from Sweden to Texas in exchange for their labor.

In 1900, the railroad arrived in Stamford, when the independent Texas Central Railway completed its 38-mile (61 km) line from Albany to the town.

[8] By 1908, Stamford was connected to points north and east, through a line of the Wichita Valley Railroad running south from Seymour and commissioned expressly for this purpose.

[5] The city's general-aviation airport, Arledge Field, began operation in April 1941 as an Army Air Corps training center during World War II.

A small, crippled, cigar-chewing man, Flournoy began each day's work with target shooting at a stump outside city hall.

[14] In September 1900, months after Stamford was formed, the 1900 Galveston hurricane caused flooding in the city and reportedly killed 10 people.

With a contestant roster made up primarily of working cowboys and regular folks, the event came to be billed as the "world's largest amateur rodeo".

In the 1948 United States Senate election in Texas, candidate Coke Stevenson participated in the event and rode down the street on horseback, which won him many cheers.

[26] Today, the event is held for four days each year around July 4 at the Texas Cowboy Reunion Grounds in Stamford.

Annual events include a grand parade, four rodeo performances, a matched horse race, ropings, chuckwagon and barbecue cookoffs, daily barbecue meals, a Western art show and sale, fiddling and poetry performances, and dances.

Elvis Presley performed at the Roundup Hall on the Texas Cowboy Reunion grounds on Friday, April 15, 1955.

Earlier that evening, Elvis performed a stage show at the Stamford High School auditorium.

[28] The Museum of the West Texas Frontier celebrates the area's ranching heritage by showcasing original paintings and prints by noted cowboy artists, farm and ranch artifacts from the early 20th century, antique furnishings, period clothing, and a chuck wagon.

Many thousands of acres of arable farmland surround the city, the majority of which is used to cultivate upland cotton.