"Ghost Towns Part of Milam Co. Heritage" by Jeanne Williams.Temple Daily Telegram:

Ghost Towns Part of Milam Co. Heritage

by Jeanne Williams - Temple Daily Telegram

November 14, 2011

CAMERON — “A place where the reason for being no longer exists.”

This is how “Ghost Towns of Texas” author Dr. T. Lindsay Baker classifies Texas

settlements emptied when the inhabitants packed up and chased their dreams in other

localities.

The common denominator to Texas ghost towns was the arrival of the railroad, when oil

fields were pumped dry, lumber camps closed or factories shut their doors.

The demise of many Central Texas villages rooted in agriculture in the latter 19th

century and early 20th century was the arrival of motorized cultivators and harvesters

that virtually shut down one-horse family farms and the tiny communities that served

them. Hence, schools consolidated, stores closed and post offices shut down. But a

common thread is not hard fact, and each ghost town is “as different as their stories,”

Baker said.

Many town sites of yesteryear have been beaten into the ground, but the lucky ones

might warrant landmark status, with a pin-dot on a roadmap, a highway road sign, Texas

Historical Marker or a few paragraphs in a local history book.

Port Sullivan and Bryant Station are Milam County’s most recognized ghosts of

communities past, each warranting a prestigious listing in Baker’s book not only

because of their unusual early 19th century beginnings, but because heritage tourists

can actually visit these sites on public land and see tangible evidence of their

existence.

Ghost towns known more by their heritage and name than souvenirs of their short

existence are San Andres, Ad Hall, Hanover, Gay Hill, Sandow, Lilac, Nashville-on-the-

Brazos, Elevation, Sand Grove, Sipe Springs, Sandy Creek, Big Lump, Briary, Bethlehem,

Bushdale, North Elm, Cone Switch, Salem, Elm Ridge, Jones Prairie, Silver City, Nile

and one town that debuted as Sodom before residents demanded a name change to Clarkson.

Baker, distinguished in the field of Texas history, contracted with the University of

Oklahoma Press in the 1980s to write a book on Texas ghost towns for the university’s

series on abandoned towns and mines in the Southwest. Baker spent five years

researching old Texas towns, driving more than 30,000 miles across the state, and

visiting 300 town sites to choose the 80-plus he included in the book. A sequel, “More

Ghost Towns of Texas,” was published in 2005.

The term ghost town commonly conjures up images created by the Western cinema: empty

wooden buildings and vacant streets littered with tumbling tumbleweeds, Baker said. “As

it turns out, most ghost towns don’t fit that stereotype,” said Baker, a writer, and

history professor at Tarleton State University.

Though many rural towns boasted churches, schools, stores, hotels and post offices at

their peak, today they are only recognizable by a emetery, rocks and landscaping

plants. Some ghost towns are barely alive, with a skeleton population still clinging to

a one-time boom town, Baker said.

Pre-Columbian villages also qualify as ghost towns of merit. Baker’s 1986 book points

out the 1,200-year old Caddo Mounds, preserved as a state park in Cherokee County. Most

Indian villages have vanished, leaving behind little evidence other than stone weapon

points.

Port Sullivan and Bryant Station in Milam County retained enough tangible remains that

when people went there “they felt like they had been to a ghost town,” Baker said.

These two sites still are accessible along public roadways so visitors would not be

trespassing, he said.

“Port Sullivan is a really good story, and is visually appealing because of the locks

in the river and the fact that there is really a nice graveyard there. Bryant Station

has a moderately interesting cemetery and it goes back to the days when it was an

Indian trading post. You don’t think about Indian trading posts in Milam County today,”

Baker said.

Bryant Station emerged in 1840 as a fort in northwestern Milam County built to protect

settlers from Indians, according to the Handbook of Texas On-line. Named for founder

Benjamin Franklin Bryant, early settler and Battle of San Jacinto veteran, the village

around the fort prospered as a commercial center primarily because of its location on

the Marlin to Austin stage line.

The town was destined for ghost town status when the railroad established Buckholts

about three miles away. Bryant Station officially died in the 1940s when the school

consolidated with Buckholts. Today, an antique bridge crossing the Little River and a

cemetery mark the spot of the once bustling settlement.

Across the county, the town of Port Sullivan once ruled a low bluff on the Brazos River

where river boats docked to load agricultural goods headed to market. In its heyday,

the community boasted close to 1,500 residents, four stores, a saw mill, three

warehouses, a post office and a college. The railroad bypassed Port Sullivan and by the

1890s the town had faded away, according to the Handbook of Texas On-line. The cemetery

and concrete locks on the river mark the town site.

“By far the great majority of Texas ghost towns are plowed fields or pastures today and

there is nothing there for people to see, and I didn’t include those sites because they

are uninteresting, there is no feeling that you have been to a historic site,” Baker

said.

Sadly, ghost towns are continually in the making across Texas, Baker said.

“All over the state, communities with an oil base of dwindling production are slowing

withering away,” he said.

Instead of leaving behind wooden buildings, graveyards and tumbleweeds, imagine a 20th

Century ghost town with a derelict Dairy Queen, skeletons of full-service gas stations

and vacant windows of stores staring at empty streets. This description fits the ghost

town of Silver in Coke County, which died in 1960 when an oil boom played out, Baker

said.

“It had a modern school complex, completely abandoned, and a farmer was storing bales

of hay in the gymnasium of a brick-veneered high school,” Baker said.

jwilliams@tdtnews.com