A Visit to Sharp (Texas)

Maps, old-fashioned maps, the kind you see in a road atlas, are something I enjoy.  It’s easy to spend hours looking at names of places.   Coming home to Texas a few years ago, I discovered a town in Milam County called Sharp.  Since it was only about 45 minutes from our home in Taylor, I had to check this one out.   Sharp is tiny, a dot on the map, along F.M. 487, not far from Cameron, or Rockdale.   The latest census figures I found for it lists the population at around 75.  My wife and I saw at least one resident last evening, taking a shirtless stroll on a night too cold for that particular attire.  It was founded in the 1870s by William Franklin Sharp, an area physician.   It prospered with the addition of a Presbyterian church, and later, in 1896, the Davis General Store (in the opening photo), also called Sharp General Store, opened for business.  It was a hub of the community until it closed in 1985.  People, many of them farmers, would spend hours on the front porch, visiting.  There’s also the Sharp School building, almost next door to the general store.  In 1900 Sharp sprouted a post office, which closed six years later.

The school system there began in 1931, eventually including nearby communities of Lilac, Duncan, Oakville, Friendship, Val Verde and Tracy.   In 1960 the school system consolidated with the Rockdale Independent School District.  The first three photos are of the store, the final two, the school.  This is just another of my little slice of life towns in Texas.