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History in a Post
Office Box
Settlement dates from the 1850s but things didn’t really
get started until the railroad arrived in 1882 to exploit the timber in the region.
A Houston company set up a sawmill there and the community that grew around it
became known as Stryker, after the mill’s manager. A post office opened
under that name in 1885 and with the available lumber, a school, church and residences
were built. As the timber played out, the people moved on and by the 1890s the
sawmill closed shop. By 1913 the post was discontinued and the town sat in limbo
for five years – without a post office and unsure of their name.
In 1918
a new post office was applied for and application after application was rejected
by the postal authorities as unsuitable. Impressed by the persistence of the populace
and wishing to end the naming process, the Post Office Department simply assigned
the town a name. Pluck.
Another story attributes the name to a man who
complained that the rough life there required “pluck” from the residents. The
population remained below 30 people and the second post office closed in 1953.
Eventually the town disappeared from maps and today is a mere footnote in Polk
County history.
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