Albany Map
Albany is a city in Shackelford County, Texas, United States. The population was 2,034 at the 2010 Census. It is the county seat of Shackelford County.
Established in 1873, Albany was named by county clerk William Cruger after his former home of Albany, Georgia. Lieutenant Colonel William Dyess, survivor of the Bataan Death March and namesake of Dyess Air Force Base, was born in Albany on Aug 9, 1916. Major General Robert B. Williams, who led the World War II aerial bombing raid on Schweinfurt, was born in Albany on Nov. 9, 1901.
Since 1938, Texas' oldest outdoor musical, the Fort Griffin Fandangle, has been presented during the last two weekends of June in the Prairie Theater about historic Fort Griffin, a military outpost established in 1867 near Albany and since a state park. The program, the content of which is different each year, attempts to recapture the theatrical charm of the American West. The show offers covered wagons and buggies, a stagecoach, a replica of the first Texas Central Railroad train, an oil derrick, and cowboys whose ancestors pushed Longhorn herds up the nearby Great Western Cattle Trail. The Dallas Morning News describes Fandangle, accordingly: "as professional as a multi-million dollar Broadway musical, with sets and costumes to match, with a cast of three hundred." The Abilene Reporter-News calls the program "Frontier history served up with genuine earthiness, spiced by rare humor."
Nearby cities include Moran, Lueders.