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Texas Ghost
Town
STREETMAN,
TEXASFreestone County,
North Central Texas
Highways 45/ 75 on the Freestone-Navarro County Line
13 miles N of Fairfield
17 miles S of Corsicana
75 miles SE of Dallas
Population:
203 (2000)
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Streetman
General Store and the Milner Drug Store (left). On the side of the
Drug store you can faintly see the Milner Drug ghost sign.
Photo courtesy Erik Whetstone, October 2005 |
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History in
a Pecan Shell
The Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway arrived in 1905 before the
town was established. The following year the town came into being
and was named to honor Sam Streetman of Houston,
who had surveyed the town for the railroad. In 1907 the nearby community
of Cade, Texas lost its post office to Streetman. A newspaper was
published in 1912 and the town incorporated two years later with
a population estimated at 600.
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The
old gas station
Photo courtesy Erik Whetstone, October 2005 |
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Streetman's
first school classes were taught in a blacksmith shop in 1907. A
designated building came in 1913 but during the school consolidation
in the late 1940s, Streetman's school merged with those in Fairfield.
Streetman's salad days ran from 1920 through the Great Depression.
From a population of just over 500 in 1931, it declined after WWII
as did most smaller towns in Texas. By the late 1970s the population
was down to 239, and the town's school children were bussed to Fairfield.
The figure given on the 2006 state map was 203 residents.
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