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Lubbock is the 11th-largest city in the state of Texas. Located in the northwestern part of the state—a region known historically as the Llano Estacado—it is the county seat of Lubbock County. According to an estimate by the U.S. Census in 2005, the city population was 209,737. The Lubbock metropolitan area, however, has a population of 257,663. Lubbock's nickname is the "Hub City" which derives from being the economy, education, and health care hub of a multi-county region commonly called the South Plains. The area is the largest contiguous cotton-growing region in the world and is heavily dependent on irrigation water drawn from the Ogallala Aquifer. Lubbock is pronounced "LUB uck", with the ə sound in both syllables. History
The county of Lubbock was founded in 1876, named after Thomas Saltus Lubbock, a Confederate colonel and founder of the Texas Rangers. As early as 1884, a federal post office named Lubbock existed in Yellowhouse Canyon. However, Lubbock the town of Lubbock was not founded until 1890, when it was formed from a unique merger arrangement between two smaller towns, "Old Lubbock" and Monterey. The terms of the compromise included keeping the Lubbock name but the Monterey townsite, so the previous Old Lubbock residents relocated South to the Monterey location, including putting Old Lubbock's Nicolette Hotel on rollers and pulling it across a canyon to its new home. (Monterey would later become the name of one of Lubbock's high schools.) In 1891 Lubbock became the county seat and in 1909 was reincorporated as a city. Texas Technological College was founded in 1923, later renamed Texas Tech University. Its medical school, the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, was added in 1970. In August 1951, a v-shaped formation of lights was seen over the city. The "Lubbock Lights" series of sightings received national publicity and is regarded as one of the first great UFO cases. The sightings were considered credible because they were witnessed by several respected science professors at Texas Technological College and were photographed by a Texas Tech student. The photograph was reprinted nationwide in newspapers and in LIFE magazine. Project Blue Book, the US Air Force's official study of the UFO mystery, did an extensive investigation of the Lubbock Lights. They concluded that the photographs were not a hoax and showed genuine objects. However, they did dismiss the UFOs themselves as being either "night-flying moths" or a type of bird called a plover. The Air Force argued that the underside of the plovers or moths was reflected in the glow of Lubbock's new street lights at night. However, other researchers have disputed these explanations, and for many the "Lubbock Lights" remain a mystery. Lubbock Christian University was founded in 1957. On May 11, 1970 the Lubbock Tornado struck the city killing 26 people and doing about $125 million damage. Downtown's NTS Tower, then known as the Great Plains Life Building, is, at 271 feet in height, believed to be the tallest building ever to survive a direct hit from an F-5 tornado. Work at the Lubbock Lake Landmark, an archaeological and natural history preserve at the northern edge of the city, provides evidence of almost twelve thousand years of human occupation in the region. The current flag replaced the previous one at an unknown date. Research Tips
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