Samfordyce - Texas Ghost Town

SAMFORDYCE

NAME: Samfordyce
COUNTY: Hidalgo
ROADS: 2WD
GRID: 2
CLIMATE: Warm winter, hot summer
BEST TIME TO VISIT:Winter, spring, fall

COMMENTS: Near Sullivan City.
REMAINS: A few ruins.

When postal authorities received an application for a post office to be named Sam Fordyce, a financial backer for a railway, they refused to grant a post office name consisting of two words. The application was resubmitted combining both names into one and the town of Samfordyce was born on November 3, 1905. The community began as the western terminus for the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway in 1905, a town planned to become the center for irrigated agriculture. By 1910, the town had been reduced to vacant hotels, empty stores and fewer than five families. The plans for irrigation did not materialize. The town had a second beginning late in 1910 because of the revolutionary activity on the other side of the Rio Grande in Mexico. Federal troops were sent to Samfordyce along with thousands of cars of freight to be warehoused in the town to support the troops. When the need for the troops no longer existed, the military post was closed and by 1920 the town again was in decline and the post office closed in 1926. Samfordyce was given a third opportunity to survive when oil was discovered in 1934 in a field north of the town. The Samfordyce Oil Field produced considerable oil through the World War II years after which petroleum production declined and the town became a ghost for the third time. All that the visitor will see today are scattered ruins of a town that thrice died. SUBMITTED BY: Henry Chenoweth	Samfordyce Railway Station, 1963 Courtesy Hidalgo County Historical Museum, Edinburg, Texas

When postal authorities received an application for a post office to be named Sam Fordyce, a financial backer for a railway, they refused to grant a post office name consisting of two words. The application was resubmitted combining both names into one and the town of Samfordyce was born on November 3, 1905. The community began as the western terminus for the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway in 1905, a town planned to become the center for irrigated agriculture. By 1910, the town had been reduced to vacant hotels, empty stores and fewer than five families. The plans for irrigation did not materialize. The town had a second beginning late in 1910 because of the revolutionary activity on the other side of the Rio Grande in Mexico. Federal troops were sent to Samfordyce along with thousands of cars of freight to be warehoused in the town to support the troops. When the need for the troops no longer existed, the military post was closed and by 1920 the town again was in decline and the post office closed in 1926. Samfordyce was given a third opportunity to survive when oil was discovered in 1934 in a field north of the town. The Samfordyce Oil Field produced considerable oil through the World War II years after which petroleum production declined and the town became a ghost for the third time. All that the visitor will see today are scattered ruins of a town that thrice died. SUBMITTED BY: Henry Chenoweth

Samfordyce Railway Station, 1963
Courtesy Hidalgo County Historical Museum, Edinburg, Texas

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