Paige is named for the engineer who drew the line it sits on. Norman Paige laid out the route of the Houston and Texas Central through this part of Bastrop County, and in 1872 a water tower stop on that route took his name. A post office followed in 1874, and the station moved three miles east in 1876. In 1877 a German settler named Fedor Soder arrived, opened a store and a cotton gin, and began selling town lots to other German immigrants, which is why a town named for an Anglo surveyor filled up with German families. Then came cotton, in quantity. By 1884 Paige had three hundred and fifty people and seven cotton gins, and two years later it had five hundred. It shipped cotton, cattle, hogs, cordwood, butter, eggs and potatoes, and it supported a pickle factory, a creamery and a broom factory alongside the gins. In 1914 there were four hundred residents, a bank and telephone service. The collapse is the part worth hearing. Four hundred and sixty seven people and ten businesses in 1941; two hundred and twenty people and eight businesses by 1952. The town lost more than half its population in eleven years when cotton stopped paying, and it has never come back: about two hundred and seventy five in 1990 and the same in 2000. Seven gins is the number to hold on to. The gins are gone.
Getting there
30.2116, -97.1133
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
