Spurlin, Texas

Spurlin is a ghost town in northwestern Hamilton County, Texas. The Handbook of Texas places it about four miles from Carlton, which handled its mail.^[1] A Hamilton County gazetteer compiled by Elreeta Crain Weathers puts it 13 miles north of Hamilton, 7 miles south of Carlton and 4 miles from the Leon River.^[2] A 1909 newspaper report placed it ten miles north of Hamilton.^[3] Wikipedia gives its elevation as 1,263 feet.^[4] GNIS lists it as populated place 1379106 on the USGS Gentrys Mill quadrangle, and the Texas Almanac classes it as a town that no longer exists.^[5][6] Its Wikidata item, Q122569865, describes it as a "hamlet in Hamilton County, Texas, United States".^[7]

Name

Spurlin was named for John L. Spurlin of Hamilton. A dispatch datelined Spurlin, 4 March 1909, and printed in the Washington Herald the next day, says so directly: "Spurlin is named for John L. Spurlin, of Hamilton".^[3] The Weathers gazetteer calls the new town "a project of John L Spurlin" and says the railroad "inspired John L. Spurlin to create a new town".^[2][8] The Handbook of Texas entry on the community does not say whom it was named for.^[1]

John L. Spurlin (1853–1935)^[9] was described by a San Antonio newspaper in 1906 as "one of the biggest merchants of West Central Texas".^[10] He sat on the first board of directors of the Stephenville North and South Texas Railway.^[11] See Spurlins of Hamilton County, Texas for more on him.

Origins and the railroad

Spurlin was a railroad town on the Stephenville North and South Texas Railway. Surveyors planned the line to run from Stephenville through Alexander, Carlton and "Spurling" to Hamilton, and its 43-mile Stephenville–Hamilton section opened on 31 December 1907.^[11] Spurlin was one of four stations on the original line with what appear to have been identical wooden depots of a standard design.^[12]

According to the Weathers gazetteer, the sale of town lots was held by auction on 21 November 1908 in front of the Spurlin depot. Special trains brought buyers from Stephenville and Hamilton, with excursion fares ranging from 25 cents from Carlton to 90 cents from Stephenville. Lots sold for between $1 and $40.^[2] The 1909 Washington Herald report described the change from farmland to "a pretty little village" as taking forty days. It said several hundred business and town lots had been sold at public auction, business houses and homes were going up, and the railroad had built "a neat station".^[3]

Community and decline

The Weathers gazetteer says Spurlin had a gin with a manually operated press, a drug store, a blacksmith shop, a grocery, a general store, a lodge hall, a Baptist tabernacle and a Methodist church. A tornado on 29 September 1917 damaged most of the town's buildings and scattered the Methodist church across the countryside; the church was later rebuilt.^[2][13] Spurlin Baptist Church was admitted to the Hamilton County Baptist Association on 12 August 1914. The gazetteer says it served the community until about 1928, "when the town of Spurlin was abandoned".^[14] The Handbook of Texas, however, still describes Spurlin as a ranching community with a church and a business in 1936.^[1]

Rail service ended when all Stephenville North and South Texas track north of Hamilton, including the Stephenville–Hamilton line through Spurlin, was abandoned on 17 October 1934.^[11][12] The gazetteer blames the town's decline on the "horseless carriage". It says the railroad, stores, churches and people are gone and that the site is now a farm marked only by the crumbling brick walls of the school.^[2][15] By the late 1980s Spurlin no longer appeared on maps.^[1]