Pumpville

Pumpville exists because steam locomotives drink. In 1882 the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway, building the line that became the Southern Pacific, put a water stop on a stretch of West Texas where surface water is close to theoretical, and a settlement grew around the job of keeping the tanks full. It was called Samuels at first. Only after wells were sunk did the name change, in 1887, to the plainer description of what the place did. Then the reason evaporated. Diesel locomotives do not stop for water, and as they came in after the Second World War the railroad withdrew its people one function at a time. The depot closed in 1952. The water service was abandoned in 1955. The school closed in 1957 and its pupils were bused fifteen miles east to Langtry. What is left is mostly foundations, a few houses, and the Pumpville Baptist Church, founded in 1930 on donated land and rebuilt in 1947. The church outlasted the town by a wide margin, and then it too closed, in 1970, until ranching families asked for it back and the Reverend Paul Ray of Sanderson reopened it in 1985. It was cleaned and painted and services resumed. They are still held, with a congregation that drives in from as far as fifty miles away and stays afterwards for a potluck lunch. It is the last working institution of a town whose original purpose ended seventy years ago.