As I've previously posted, I live in Lubbock ,Texas and the closest passenger rail service is San Antonio or Austin but I enclose a little history of rail service in my area. This article is about a small town 12 miles down the road from my home. It was quite a hub in it's day's. What the article didn't mention is that about another 25 miles down the road from Slaton is the city of Post...Where CW Post built a large plant early in the 20th century to produce Post Cereals (Post Toasties) and ship by rail.
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SLATON, TEXAS. The site of Slaton, on U.S. Highway 84 fifteen miles southeast of Lubbock in southeastern Lubbock County, was originally part of a tract patented by Eli Stilson and J. I. Case on September 1, 1879. Case, who manufactured farm machinery, sold the property six years later to the Western Land and Livestock Company, which developed it into part of the firm's IOA Ranch.qv J. W. and Herbert L. Kokernotqv purchased the land in 1901, promoted settlement in the area, and later sold the property to J. C. Phillips. The community was founded when the Santa Fe Railroad sent W. B. Storey, Jr., from Chicago to establish a townsite as a division point to service trains. The company purchased the townsite on April 15, 1911, and designed its street pattern after the layout of Washington, D.C. The town officially opened on June 15, 1911; it was named in honor of rancher and banker O. L. Slaton, who promised to establish a bank. A post office was established by 1910, and the South Park addition was deeded to L. A. Wells and other developers in that year. At one time Slaton had four daily trains-a northbound and southbound train between Amarillo and Sweetwater, the Amarillo local, and the Lamesa local. It also had a Harvey House restaurant at the tracks. Slaton was the center of the largest division in the Santa Fe system. Santa Fe employees and their families moved there, and the population grew. Businesses included a cotton gin and mill and the Caps and Singleton hotels. The town incorporated on October 26, 1912. The weekly Slaton Journal was edited by E. W. Dickey beginning on June 15, 1911, and a school, established two miles west of the community in 1897, became the center of the Slaton Independent School District on March 9, 1912. By 1931 Slaton had 145 businesses and a population of 3,876; in 1949 it had 117 businesses and a population of 3,587. In the late 1960s the Santa Fe began shutting down operations at Slaton and moved offices to Lubbock, Amarillo, and New Mexico..............
It's sad to see a town die and although not dead, it has a population of around 2000 and is nothing but a farming community now.....
The large plant in Post was also closed and is now an Arts and Craft Show complex.
