Hereford—named for the region’s favored cattle breed—is a Panhandle town of 14,500 and the seat of Deaf Smith County.  In the early 20th century, Dr.George W. Heard left his native Alabama and moved there to set up a dental practice.  Dr. Heard was immediately struck by the townspeople’s outstanding dental health and he began publicizing it within his profession.  He did not, however, attribute it to the town’s water—naturally fluoridated at 1 part per million, today’s “ideal” standard for artificial fluoridation.  Rather, he traced it to the locals’ diet:  rich in unprocessed grains and vegetables grown in Hereford’s well-mineralized soil, and an abundant consumption of raw milk.  Hereford's crops and milk were exceptionally high in such nutrients as protein, calcium, magnesium, potassium, iodine and Vitamin C. 

By 1939, Dr. Heard's findings had attracted the attention of Dr. Edward Taylor, chief dental officer of the Texas Department of Health, who came to Herford to check out Heard's claims.  Taylor conducted a two-year study that showed Hereford to have the lowest tooth decay rate among schoolchildren of any city in the United States.

Taylor completed his study in 1941, the year the United States entered World War II.  The war machine was gearing up, and fluoride—vital to wartime production of metals and enriched uranium—was acquiring an unsavory reputation for its high toxicity.  At the same time, government and industry-sponsored scientists were frantically looking for ways to rehabilitate it.  Thus, Taylor "noticed"  that fluoride in the water was also a major contributor to the townsfolk's happy dental state.  He reported  to the research section of the American Dental Association that this might prove to be “one of the most important discoveries in dental history.”  

The popular Ripley's Believe It Or Not picked up the story in early 1942, dubbing Hereford "The Town Without a Toothache."   Features in Time and Collier's magazines around the same time carried the mystique further. although they divided the credit between  the water and the rich topsoil.   Time noted approvingly that "with just the right amount of fluorine," the staining of teeth was very mild.   http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,851436,00.html            

By 1948, a local dentist, Dr. F. M. Butler was promoting Hereford's sound dental health as due entirely to natural fluoride in the area’s water. His "discoveries" were later "verified" by the Texas Department of Health.  Butler's perception stuck—much to the irritation of the man who started it all. 

George Heard lived a very long life, and as the years went by he saw things change.  As the town grew and more people began to consume processed foods, white flour products, and soft drinks, tooth decay increased

“Hereford, Texas has been called the town without a toothache.  This is not true.  But the phrase has been used effectively by the people interested in marketing ‘sodium fluoride’ all over the country,” he complained in a 1954 letter to Mr. Roby C. Day of San Diego, California.  http://www.sonic.net/kryptox/history/toothache.htm

The letter, which I found on the Internet, was pursuasive but unsourced, with only the cryptic reference:  This is an electronic reproduction of a photocopy of the Heard letter which was sent to me by Evangeline Winkler. When further research revealed that there are more Evangeline Winklers in the world than I would ever have guessed, some of them dead, I turned to search on the name of Roby C. Day.  There, rather to my surprise, I was successful:  the letter is referenced on page 95 of 
                                          
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