10 SMALLEST Towns in TEXAS

foreign welcome to the video where we count down the 10 smallest towns in Texas from the 10th smallest Incorporated town to the very smallest Incorporated town and and I say Incorporated because that's key unincorporated towns aren't on this list so if you're looking for your town and you wonder why it's not here it's probably because it's not Incorporated so all these towns have a form of government they have a a mayor of some sort or a city council and they are officially towns that are counted in the U.S census population figures should be an interesting trip so let's get started with number 10. [Music] foreign [Music] we start our trip in Putnam Texas population 63 and Putnam is a typical town that was larger and it has over time gotten smaller and smaller and I'm inside the Putnam post office there's no one here it's just kind of one of those small towns where the you come in and get your mail or you or email something out and there's uh not always someone at the post office um but Putnam was a railroad town it's actually the way it's set up the railroad kind of splits the town in two I-20 is in the middle as well so they put that you know paralleling the railroad eventually and uh Putnam they started as a a place that had some Mineral Springs and the town promoters thought it could become a big town to promote those kind of like Healing Springs but it was I guess was too close to Mineral Wells which is not too far from here and it never really was able to take off they did discover oil and there was a fruit uh fruit you know agriculture here and and so that helped the town grow there were there was at one time like 600 people that lived here and then it has dwindled over time it's basically a ghost town in terms of the you know it's lost like 90 percent of the population and as you go around there are a lot of old abandoned buildings um if you if you like that kind of stuff it's certainly a place to explore on both sides of the railroad track so there's also a downtown that has a lot of old buildings as well a couple businesses there's a cafe that was open but not too much going on but a terrific way to start the countdown here at number 10. [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you this is a pretty remarkable Place uh it was much larger over a thousand people in the early 1900s and and now it's down to 61. and you can see when you go around this town there's so many you know it's so big it's you can see there used to be a lot of people here and you know it's unfortunate what has become it's basically a ghost town although obviously there are people still living here there are people you know driving around working around the area but it is so many abandoned places like the school behind me which I'm going to show you a little bit of inside there but uh yeah it's I'll give you a perspective with the Drone to give you an idea how big it is and and uh but yeah certainly sad State of Affairs for what it is when you drive around but there's a lot of beautiful old buildings and uh for a guy like me really enjoys seeing a place like this and thinking about what it used to be in his Heyday when it was a major um stop on the railroad for cattle shipping and like I said ahead over a thousand people the Great Depression uh heard it significantly and and it started to dwindle and then a couple decades ago there was a tornado that ripped through here and took out a lot of the old buildings I I think even kind of right along the railroad we're a few blocks from the railroad right here but right along the railroad I think is where kind of the main street was and there's there's just kind of some rubble and um a few older buildings still there but we'll take a look at it foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] Lakeview has had kind of an interesting history and it's very interesting place to visit um just my initial Impressions when I got here I drove down the main street and it's amazing how many old buildings are still here it's very windy out here you can hear the uh they got a little chime up there I'm in front of the old school and but but yeah just amazing driving down that Main Street and so many old abandoned buildings down there that haven't been demolished that's always great you know for a guy like me to find because I like that kind of stuff and shows the history of the town but the town was um it's been a Survivor even though it's obviously getting much smaller and down to 60 people in the latest census and but it was originally in a different location and they put it in the look in that location because that's where the railroad was and then I don't know if if maybe it wasn't great place for agriculture or something but um they decided to the the people who started that decided to move away or sell their land and then someone who stayed back took over the post office and and kind of the ownership of the town and they moved it to another location which ended up being good for the growth it it was uh I've read it's as many as a thousand people the early estimates of population show only into 300 to 400 range but they said before that time kind of before the Great Depression there was almost a thousand people that lived here and then the Great Depression hit and then there were a series of fires as well kind of during that time that that was that was uh difficult to deal with and and then over time it just got smaller and smaller and it is very remote it is it is a long kind of lonely road to get here but you can see the the the town is a mixture of these old abandoned buildings and old houses so you see people still live here the houses are kind of worn out looking and actually some places you can't really tell if it's an abandoned house or somebody might live there because I think the wind and the weather and just it has beaten down uh this place but there's business here there's I mean farming you walk around you see cotton balls everywhere that have the wind has blown them throughout the town but there's a restaurant and there's there's business happening it's a weekday and there's people around so still a little life left in Lakeview Texas foreign [Music] thank you foreign foreign [Music] Lakes is a very strange one I'm not sure uh what to make of this one I don't know much about it not a whole lot of information online except for it's a new town it was it was uh Incorporated in 1985. originally this area was known as Dayton Lake Estates there's a town called Dayton not far away and there's I think lakes around here um and uh they wanted the people here wanted to incorporate into their own town so in 1985 they voted they petitioned the county and they um created a town although you drive around and it's very strange it's it's rained here obviously recently so it's a not very many paved roads it's kind of way back it you go off the main road and drive for a few miles and um and you're kind of in the middle of nowhere and the roads are like I said muddy and um it's strange and it it feels like uh you know just kind of out here in a quiet place it is very pretty um but it's I don't know what to make of it population has when they Incorporated it was almost a couple hundred people and it's it's shrunk every census down so I don't know I'll give you a little bit of idea what's here but maybe other people know a little bit more about Dayton Lakes than I can find [Music] foreign [Music] foreign foreign Texas I believe that's how you say Spofford and I'm standing here on the railroad tracks or near the railroad tracks because this is how the community started the 1882 the railroad came through here and a couple years later the Town started and uh was pretty popular stop along the railroad here and population grew to about 400 the first recorded populations I could find was in the 1950s or so and it was just under that and then it's dwindled since then actually it went down into the double digits about 1960 and has been there went up a little bit in 2010 and then back down to what it is today so it's a very quiet community you can hear all the dogs barking obviously they've been chasing me around as I've been exploring and uh and uh but it's very peaceful it's kind of unusual because it's a big area when you drive around it's hard to find some things there's a few remnants of of old buildings but there's not too many but most of them are here along the railroad tracks come on [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to the town of Draper Texas AKA Corral City and kind of an interesting little town not a traditional Old Town uh it is noisy we are right next to uh Highway 35 we're just a few miles north of the Texas Motor Speedway here near Fort Worth and so if you're if you know where that at where that is then you'll know where I'm kind of standing right now but interesting history so in 1973 the Hilton family started this town to get around the liquor laws you hear about that some in Texas there's a dry county so they wanted to sell alcohol so they Incorporated 20 acres of land and they made it a town called it Corral City and you can imagine 1973 this area wasn't built up like it is now now it's towns and things all you know houses and things that are all kind of butting up against each other but back then it was a you know a place to stop and get alcohol and probably convenience store and things like that as well so uh in the 1990s the heltons sold the property and it became kind of a ghost town and so the man a man named Draper became the mayor and in 2016 changed the name to Draper Texas and uh on maps it still says Corral City because obviously I mean there's buildings that say Corral City here so it's known as that even though I think technically the name is Draper now if you type in Draper it'll take you to Corral City so kind of interesting you know how that works out but it's it's a interesting place because it has a RV a big RV park where there's a lot of RVs and um you know people that are here the population is only 33 so I don't know where the 33 people live if some of them maybe are permanent residents in the RV Park uh because it looks like there's just land besides the RV park and then there's a big convenience store right here next to me uh called the Corral City Market so there's also a Corral right next to it so it's it's just a weird you know Texas has some odd things and so there's a highway with a Corral next to it with Corral City very interesting strange and exactly what you would probably expect from Texas thank you foreign was the smallest town in the 2010 census and has grown slightly since then and others have gotten smaller so that's why it is where it is on the list now this is a a crazy one you'll see a pattern developing of these towns that wanted to sell alcohol and that's why they incorporated as towns and this is this is one of those and Texas with a drug was dry state was a dry State I guess and each municipality or county is able to create their own laws that way and so this was in the 1970s or 80s they Incorporated this small piece of land and started a liquor store convenience store which is still here I actually spoke to the gentleman running it and I could explore a little bit it's it's uh unbelievable it has a kind of an oblong shaped road that goes around and there are so many abandoned houses the population was you know in the 80s when it kind of started and now it's down in the you know 20s and it seems like there's probably 50 buildings or houses they're all houses and a handful of them uh have anyone remaining most of them are just abandoned and so I don't know what what happened or why that was the case but it's it's strange um and it's uh a little Eerie to walk around and check this out but the the gentleman at the store is very friendly and you know so I thought definitely was glad that I came here this is definitely a unique experience in finding the smallest towns in Texas [Music] foreign [Music] foreign foreign [Music] this next town of Quintana is certainly different than all the other towns mainly because we are right here next to we're on the beach next to the Gulf of Mexico and it's the one town that's not Inland on this whole list and it has a very unique history it was originally in the 1820s Mexico gained its independence from Spain and won this piece of land and so this was a Mexican owned for a long time and it was a strategic area obviously a port that was good to have control of they had a fort here and then you hear you're gonna hear some of those noises as we're on the beach here but uh but then Stephen F Austin led a group of people who took over this land um because it was such a valuable area and this they they took over this land thinking that it could become a major port like Houston or Galveston which are just you know north of here and it never happened uh there there was growth there was um a time where it grew to several hundred people and um but for one reason or another uh it just never took off as the major port like those other cities did they had some good ideas they created what was called Jetties uh here to kind of uh help with fishing and to help get ships into the port um and this became a big fishing Village and still is actually around 1900 there was a big hurricane that wiped out much of that much of the town and they had to rebuild uh they did and it kind of came back again and then the Depression hit and then they uh some chemical and oil companies bought some of this land to this and to this day you can see them it's right next to the town that's considered Quintana and you can see these big factories right over here right next to the road very very you know beautiful area I'm sure and it would be a cool place to visit it's it's remote to get to um you know it's it's not a convenient stop off the expressway so you do have to take a little bit of a detour but I imagine in the summertime when the sun's out the beach is full of families and and uh good times are ahead by all [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] it's pretty wild but I'm gonna take it as far as I can we'll see how far I can go foreign sketchy walk it's not bad here at the end the rocks are more protected and kind of up around you but through the middle there that was I don't know if it's a bad day or normally it's just choppy but uh yeah it's uh that was I've been in a some pretty creepy places throughout the series of making these videos and uh my heart was racing a little bit walking down that because it's just a I don't know it's a good Mile with waves crashing on both sides of you [Music] and now we have reach number two on the list with impact Texas population 22 and this is another one of those towns that was created to get around the uh liquor laws in the you know mid 1900s this one was in the early 1960s was it was bought and Incorporated right here on the outskirts of Abilene and This was um actually when they tried to incorporate this town the City of Abilene because it was so close and there were a lot of people that didn't want liquor sold here um they fought it and it actually went all the way to the Texas Supreme Court before the town of impact won and was able to incorporate and then they as a town voted to make it legal to sell alcohol and opened a store here it was very successful and very profitable and with that money the city was able to pave roads and have some structure you know to the town before it was just a plot of land where there was a you know a store and and some houses the original a person that had the idea his name was Dallas Perkins and he owned a store called pinkies that had a big pink elephant in the front in 1978 the county narrowly voted to allow liquor sales here and so once that happened uh the need for impact uh the you know the liquor selling here was was not needed anymore uh it was never a big Community uh I think 61 has been the most that it's had and it's gotten smaller down to what it is 22 today there's really not much here there's the intersection is is Barren basically and and there is foundations of a building I'm assuming that was probably the the main store because it's right here it's a it's a very small area of land just a couple streets and so there's that there's a a pretty cool looking old oil uh structure there and within the city limits there is a Distribution Company so there is a business here that's it's behind a you know private driveway uh so um so there is something here and the fact that we are basically a suburb here of Abilene you could see that someday I imagine if Abilene grows it will grow out to here and maybe this could become a pretty valuable place foreign [Music] foreign [Music] we have made it to the number one spot Mustang Texas and population zero and this is a wild and kind of crazy story and I'm in the vehicle because it's right basically on a busy and noisy Highway uh 45 here in Texas it's an unusual story unusual history and why it has zero um you know it's kind of a mystery but here's kind of the history of the town so this County was a dry county Navarro County and in 1973 there were some people that wanted to start a town so they could sell alcohol here and since you couldn't do it anywhere else it kind of it would become a center of a place where people could go buy alcohol so in 1973 a group of people led by a William McKee Incorporated the town of Mustang and it became they opened a business here and probably a convenience store and and a place to sell alcohol and they did that until about in the 1990s where other places were able to start selling alcohol as well so it lost its status as kind of the place in this area to sell alcohol and by the end of the 1990s it had its highest population of 47 and then from theirs it's gone down but not for typical reasons so in 2005 the owner of the Town basically William McKee who started the town was going to sell his sell the property to a Tommy Sinclair uh for something like six hundred thousand dollars and he had a club which is actually still here not open anymore we had a club on the property and so it was going to kind of become his town the transaction didn't get completed and Mr McKee passed away before that could happen so his wife took over uh kind of the responsibility of the town but Tommy Sinclair sued because he was you know thinking he should have ownership of the property and amidst all this about a year later uh the city of Angus which is basically right next to it here was going to shut off the water because no the town had not paid their water bill so uh the wife of Mr McKee paid the water bill herself so they were the residents that were here were able to have water so then in 2007 or 2008 there were two different parties that thought they should own this property and so they had two separate elections to elect like the council and and within days they both had elections and after they had their election results which were literally a handful of votes because there weren't that many people here there were a dozen people here so and after those election results they both claimed legitimacy of the government of Mustang but another twist one year later in 2009 Tommy Sinclair who ran that club right there um he was indicted on murder of a man inside that club and so when that happened um obviously there's confusion what's what do we do what's going on here there's a population of 21 in the year 2010 and then in the 2020 census it comes out that there's zero people living here and then an article comes out in the Dallas newspaper that Dallas Mavericks owner of the NBA Mark Cuban bought the property for two million dollars and in the in the article he said he did it to help a friend so I don't know which friend that was uh but he did it to help a friend and he had no plans for the future of the property it's 77 acres and now Mark Cuban owns all this land it's officially in in the eyes of the Texas census it's still the town and there's no one living here what is Mark gonna plan to do is is there going to be any uh future for the town a Mustang or is it just going to become a ghost town an unincorporated community [Music] thank you so what did you think of that list obviously some different reasons compared to the other states I've done for towns becoming towns but also some legit kind of ghost towns and some towns that just got smaller over time some that had history and some with very strange history like Mustang here with the owner of Mark Cuban so that was a that was a fun trip I really enjoyed uh going around the Lone Star State it was a long trip there was a lot of miles on this one but a lot of interesting history here in Texas and that was a lot of fun [Music] this is what it's like driving through West Texas when it's 16 mile an hour wind oh my goodness it is windy holy moly and once you get out to the end here it's just me and the birds it was a fishing lure that dropped off to freak me out my heart's racing a little bit way home spelling you buddy

Channel: Travel with a Wiseguy

Views: 517,233

Keywords: Texas, Smallest Towns Texas, smallest towns, Texas small towns, Mustang, Draper, Corral City, Putnam, Impact, Lakeview, Los Ybanez, Toyah, Spofford, Qiuntana, Dayton Lakes, Texas ghost towns, Mustang Texas, Draper Texas, Corral City Texas, Putnam Texas, Impact Texas, Lakeview Texas, Los Ybanez Texas, Toyah Texas, Spofford Texas, Quintana Texas, Dayton Lakes Texas, Wiseguy, Mustang ghost town, Putnam ghost town, Toyah ghost town, Quintana ghost town, Texas travel, Spofford ghost

Id: WJBhqDYSRZk

Length: 41min 13sec (2473 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 12 2023