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Dale ~ ca 1875
Present-day Dale is located nine miles northeast
of Lockhart on the Smithville and San Marcos branch of the MKT railroad and is
on Farm to Market Road 1854. The town was originally called Pea Ridge and was
located two miles south of the present site. The name change occurred when the
railroad came through, about 1879. The first school was probably Lone Star, a
typical one-room, one-teacher institution, supported by private subscription and
supplemented by state funds. The Dale Post Office was established June 2, 1880.
The first churches were the Baptist Church and Church of Christ, both still
active. Later churches were Methodist and Pentecostal. With discovery of oil in
the 1920s Dale businesses were varied: general merchandising, cafe, drug store,
ice house, and a picture show, telephone exchange, as well as a cotton gin and
blacksmith shop. Population in 1914 rose to 250 and slowly declined in the
depression years. Today Dale is growing again, with the development of new homes
in the area.
Source - Plum Creek Almanac, Vol. 14, No. 1,
Spring 1996 and Caldwell County Kin: The First 150 Years published by the
Genealogical and Historical Society of Caldwell County, November 2000.
The Plum Creek Almanac is a project
of The Genealogical and Historical Society of Caldwell County.
 The Genealogical and Historical Society
of Caldwell County Copyright © 1963-2019
Updated
10/14/2019
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