Lamkin

Lamkin kept its numbers small. The Handbook says the town had a post office by 1884 and, in 1890, a general store and twenty-five people. About 1913 the St. Louis Southwestern, the Cotton Belt, served it, and by 1914 it had three general stores, a drugstore, a blacksmith shop and a cotton gin. The town counted 300 residents in 1929 and then declined steadily, settling at eighty-eight from the 1970s through 2000. The Handbook places it on State Highway 36, twenty-four miles southeast of Comanche.

What the plaque says

Lamkin Originally established 1870, one-half mile north on bands of the Leon River. Named for George Lamkin, donor of land for townsite. Business firms included general store, blacksmith shop, gin, post office and drugstore. Despite several floods and fires, pioneer merchants gamely rebuilt. Only after the flood of 1908 destroyed old Lamkin was town moved to present site. Two years later with the coming of the Cotton Belt Railroad, Lamkin developed into a shipping center for farmers and ranchers. By 1920, the town had 2 gins, a hotel, bank, produce house, lumberyard, blacksmith shop, 3 general stores, post office, 4 churches, telephone exchange and drugstore. Consolidated Public School had average attendance of over 200. Basketball team was county champion for 4 consecutive years. Annual attraction was horse and mule show. In 1922, fire destroyed a major portion of business firms. Lamkin rebuilt but failed after railroad discontinued, 1936. An often-related pioneer story was of 1869 Indian raid 2 miles east of here on Resley's Creek. The home of Mrs. Elizabeth Ewell was ransacked by 19 renegade Indians. The widow and her 2 sons were not at home but on their return were greeted by clouds of feathers from ripped mattresses. A posse drove the Indians away. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hamilton County Courthouse — 12 mi
  A limestone courthouse of 1886-87 on the Hamilton square, built after the county's 1878 courthouse burned, enlarged in the early 1930s and rededicated in 2012 after restoration.
• Dublin Bottling Works — 19 mi
  The Erath County plant that bottled Dr Pepper with cane sugar from 1891 until a 2012 settlement ended its Dr Pepper license, and that still makes its own sodas the same way.

More markers nearby

• Union Primitive Baptist Church — 0.3 mi
• Carlton Cemetery — 8.4 mi
• Gustine — 8.5 mi
• Cora — 8.6 mi