The area was named for Royal T. Wheeler, the second chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court. On April 12, 1879, Wheeler County became the first organized county in the Panhandle, with fourteen other unorganized counties attached to it. The small camp of Sweetwater was chosen to be the county seat; the settlement was renamed Mobeetie in 1880. The evolution of the economy also contributed to the county's government being moved in 1907 from Mobeetie to Wheeler, which was located closer to the center of the county. An unusual boundary adjustment on Wheeler County's eastern border occurred in the late 1920s, when a boundary conflict between Texas and Oklahoma led to a resurvey of the line and a United States Supreme Court decision in 1930. As a result the eastern border of the Texas Panhandle was moved 3,800 feet to the east, to the true 100th meridian. A strip 132 miles long expanded Wheeler and other border counties of Texas at the expense of adjacent counties in Oklahoma. -Handbook of Texas Online: Wheeler County