Clarendon College is a community college located in Clarendon, the seat of Donley County in the Texas Panhandle. The college operates branch campuses in Pampa and Childress. The college was established in 1898 by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and administered as a private institution (offering baccalaureate degrees at one point) until 1927, when it became a publicly-supported two-year institution. As defined by the Texas Legislature, the official service area of Clarendon College is Armstrong, Briscoe, Childress, Collingsworth, Donley, Gray, Hall, and Wheeler counties. A Methodist minister, the Reverend W. A. Allen, conceived the idea for Clarendon College in 1879, when he established Allenton Academy at old Clarendon. When the town moved to its present site on the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway in 1887, local citizens offered the Northwest Texas Methodist Conference 4 acres (16,000 m) of land and promised to build a two-story building to relocate the college. Church leaders made it clear that they would build only if saloons were eliminated from the town. Rev. J. R.