J. M. Newland established this settlement by opening a store here in 1890–91. The store was bought by J. H. Lamona in 1892, who became the town’s namesake. In 1941, it was a nondescript collection of scattered buildings, grain elevators, a water tank for locomotives, and freight cars on the railroad siding, which became the scene of intense activity during the harvest season as grain, piled high on trucks, was brought in for shipment or storage.

The tour runs almost due west from Lamona through a region with stock ranches and wheat farms. Around the watering trough there are usually horses and cattle and, not infrequently, a huddle of sheep. Regardless of the size of the farm, near the gate securely fastened to a post was almost invariably a galvanized mail box, which received letters from relatives back East, tax notices, farm journals, announcements of meetings of the Grange, and not least important, the comprehensive mail-order catalog, salesman at the service of the isolated farm. By 1941, a network of telephone lines linked farms to each other, electricity rapidly replaced kerosene and gas lamps, and the radio brought the outside world to the farm kitchen.