Vashti, Texas

Texas

A man named a Texas post office after his favorite niece, then made her the postmistress.

historicalpeople

Dave Taylor started this place sometime in the eighteen eighties. When the post office opened in 1891, he named it after his favorite niece, Vashti Strahan. She took the job of postmistress herself. By the nineteen twenties the town held about two hundred and sixty people, and for that many residents it kept a remarkable amount going. A cotton gin. Three general stores. A pharmacy and a blacksmith. Two fraternal orders. Six churches. Then the numbers turned. Farming got harder, and better roads made it easier to leave. The post office closed after 1930. By the mid nineteen fifties around a hundred and forty people remained, and the town counted itself carefully for another thirty years. Five rated businesses were operating in 1956. By the late eighties, not one was left. Fruit, dairy, cattle, and pottery had all been made here. What held the place together in the nineteen eighties was the community center. The last count put the population near seventy.

Wayside reads this to you as you drive past, timed to arrive before the place does. Plan a route through here.

What this was written from
In 1891, he named a post office after his favorite niece, Vashti Strahan.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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