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This article historicizes the rise of the Texas wind industry using the 2010 construction of the Roscoe Wind Farm in West Texas as a case study. This article uses records from local, state, and federal agencies as well as archival materials to argue that the rise of Texas wind power in the early twenty-first century was a product of broad deregulatory trends beginning in the 1970s. Deregulation had two impacts. First, state and federal policy decisions weakened old utilities monopolies. Second, the economic and social consequences of deregulation made locals interested in wind. Nationally, deregulation and globalization represented a sharp departure from earlier legislative methods of infrastructure management. In Texas, it hastened the decline of rural communities and eroded one mechanism for strident Texas nationalism. This morphed rural communities into unexpected wind advocates. The rise of Texas wind power suggests that the global trend toward deregulation and privatization post 1970 had a mixed impact on individuals, communities, and state cohesion.