Elk Community

Elk's headcount is hard to pin down. The plaque gives 150 residents and 500 served by the post office in 1894, while the Handbook of Texas counts eighteen in 1900, with the post office closed in 1906 and mail routed through Axtell. It reports seventy-five residents by the 1920s, thirty-eight in the early 1930s and seventy-five again by the decade's end. The Elk school district merged into Axtell's in 1955. By the early 1980s a church and a gas station marked the place, and the count reached 150 in 2000.

What the plaque says

Elk Community The first permanent settlers of this area were Martin and Elizabeth McConnel Harper, who arrived from Tennessee with their five children in 1855. Others who settled with the Harpers were Scots-Irish from the American south. The Harper family erected a log cabin, a schoolhouse, and outbuildings on their 160-acre farm. The community acquired the name Harper's School House, and the school also was used for religious activities and local elections. The Harper Cemetery was established by Martin and Elizabeth's son, Moses, in 1861. Lucy Morrow, whose burial was the first recorded in the cemetery, died that year. Czech and German immigrants began settling in the community about 1885. The Elk cotton gin, one of the major businesses in the area, was opened in 1890 by J. W. Mansfield and S. D. McWhorter. Mertie Emma McKinley applied for the establishment of a post office in the community in 1894. Because the name Harper's School House was rejected, Mrs. McKinley chose the name Elk. At that time the community population was 150, and the number served by the post office was 500. At various times, Elk has boasted a Catholic church, barber shop, blacksmith, doctors' offices, gristmill, livery stable, a meat market, a beer hall, cafe, fraternal lodges, several stores, and a service station, telephone exchange, and waterworks. St. Joseph's Catholic Church, established in 1925, remains at the heart of the community, which is surrounded by farmland and houses in the predominately Czech and German Elk community. (1999)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 12 mi
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 12 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.
• Armstrong Browning Library — 12 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 12 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.

More markers nearby

• Battle Cemetery and Community — 5.2 mi
• Torrey's Trading Post No. 2 — 7.8 mi
• First Baptist Church of Mart — 7.8 mi
• Col. Leonard Williams — 8.1 mi