Delhi

Delhi sits on fine sandy loam that has suited farming and livestock. A Primitive Baptist church was established in 1880 and a permanent cemetery the next year. In 1884 Delhi counted 150 people, two gristmills, two cotton gins and a school, and by 1890 the population had reached 200. It fell to thirty by 1925, when a general store was operating, and to twenty-five by 1940. In 1951 residents opened the Delhi Community Center, which was still in use in 1990, and by 2000 the population had grown back to 300.

What the plaque says

Delhi The earliest known permanent settlers in this area were Orrin L. and Susannah Winters and their extended family. By 1873, enough of a settlement existed to make application for a U. S. Post Office. Postal officials rejected the first name selected for the community, Iron Mountain, but accepted the second name, Delhi. According to local tradition, Delhi was the name of a traveling salesman who stayed in the area for a time dispensing patent medicines and providing entertainment for the settlers. John P. Reid served as first postmaster. The first store in Delhi was in operation by the early 1870s in the home of Daniel t. Winters. The Delhi community experienced some growth in the 1880s with the founding of two churches, a school, and two cotton gins. Over the years, additional businesses, including a blacksmith shop, casket shop, and a syrup mill have served the community. Although the post office closed in 1929 and the public school consolidated with the McMahan district in 1947, Delhi remains a strong rural community in eastern Caldwell county. Many of its residents are descendants of the town's pioneer families. (1992)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 17 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.
• Bastrop State Park — 21 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
• McKinney Falls State Park — 32 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 32 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.

More markers nearby

• Site of Hopkinsville — 6.7 mi
• Bethel Primitive Baptist Church — 8.4 mi
• Leander C. Cunningham — 10 mi
• Hopkinsville Lodge No. 183, A.F. & A.M. — 11 mi