Close City is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in western

Garza County Garza County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 5,816, of which most of the population were residing in its county seat, and only incorporated municipality, Post. The county was created ...

, about west-northwest of

Post Post, POST, or posting may refer to: Postal services * Mail, the postal system, especially in Commonwealth of Nations countries **An Post, the Irish national postal service **Canada Post, Canadian postal service **Deutsche Post, German postal s ...

. The small rural community lies on the High Plains of the

Llano Estacado The Llano Estacado (), sometimes translated into English as the Staked Plains, is a region in the Southwestern United States that encompasses parts of eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas. One of the largest mesas or tablelands on the North A ...

West Texas West Texas is a loosely defined region in the U.S. state of Texas, generally encompassing the desert climate, arid and semiarid climate, semiarid lands west of a line drawn between the cities of Wichita Falls, Texas, Wichita Falls, Abilene, Texa ...

. The town site was chosen as the original location of Post City, a model community and

social experiment A social experiment is a method of psychological or sociological research that observes people's reactions to certain situations or events. The experiment depends on a particular social approach where the main source of information is the parti ...

conceived by

C. W. Post Charles William Post (October 26, 1854 – May 9, 1914) was an American innovator, breakfast cereal and foods manufacturer and a pioneer in the prepared-food industry. He was the founder of what is now Post Consumer Brands. Early life and ...

, an American breakfast cereal and foods manufacturer.Julius A. Amin, "Close City, TX," Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hrc72, accessed December 31, 2011, Published by the Texas State Historical Association. In the early 1890s, Post developed a popular caffeine-free coffee substitute called

Postum Postum () is a powdered roasted grain beverage popular as a coffee substitute. The caffeine-free beverage was created by Post Consumer Brands, Post Cereal Company founder C. W. Post in 1895 and marketed as a healthier alternative to coffee. Post w ...

, and later made a fortune on breakfast cereals such as Grape Nuts and

Post Toasties Post Toasties was an early American breakfast cereal made by Post Foods. It was named for its originator, C. W. Post, and intended as the Post version of corn flakes. Post Toasties were originally sold as Elijah's Manna (c. 1904) until critic ...

.Charles D. Eaves and C. A. Hutchinson. 1952. Post City, Texas. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 171 pp. As Post's wealth grew, his interests began to expand into other areas. One project that had always intrigued him was the creation of a planned community of model homes and industry. His success in the prepared-foods industry provided the financial resources to begin this project. C. W. Post initially chose a site on the Llano Estacado for his projected settlement.Donald R. Abbe and Paul H. Carlson. 2008. Historic Garza County: an Illustrated History. San Antonio: Historical Pub. Network, p. 23. Construction of Post City began at the original site until surveyors discovered that the town was from the geographical center of Garza County. State law required a county seat to be located no more than from the center of a county, thus the chosen site could not serve as county seat. Post ordered work to stop and he shifted resources to a site located nearer the center of the county. The new site, located below the

Caprock Caprock or cap rock is a hard, resistant, and impermeable layer of rock that overlies and protects a reservoir of softer organic material, similar to the crust on a pie where the crust (caprock) prevents leakage of the soft filling (softer materia ...

, is the present-day location of Post. The original town site, called Ragtown, was renamed Close City, named after Edward Bennett "E.B." Close, who married Post's daughter,

Marjorie Merriweather Post Marjorie Merriweather Post (March 15, 1887 – September 12, 1973) was an American businesswoman, socialite, and philanthropist. She was the daughter of C. W. Post and the owner of General Foods, General Foods Corporation. For much of Post's l ...

, in 1905.Recorded Texas Historic Landmark: Old Close City School, erected in 1968 by th
Texas Historical Commission, marker number 3710.
/ref> Although some residents stayed, the town developed slowly and consequently remained a small rural community. Today, Close City is primarily a farming community. The primary crop is

cotton Cotton (), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ...

, but lesser amounts of

grain sorghum A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and legume ...

and

winter wheat Winter wheat (usually ''Common wheat, Triticum aestivum'') are strains of wheat that are planted in the autumn to germinate and develop into young plants that remain in the vegetative phase during the winter and resume growth in early spring. C ...

are also grown in the area. Crops are grown on a mixture of irrigated and dryland farms. Water for irrigation is pumped from the underlying

Ogallala Aquifer The Ogallala Aquifer () is a shallow water table aquifer surrounded by sand, silt, clay, and gravel located beneath the Great Plains in the United States. As one of the world's largest aquifers, it underlies an area of approximately in po ...

, and is usually applied using center-pivot irrigation systems. In 1909, Close City students attended school in a one-room wooden schoolhouse. In 1919, George Samson and Jimmie Napier built a new brick schoolhouse, which served the community well until 1965, when Close City School was consolidated with Post schools.Linda Puckett. 2010. Images of America: Garza County. Arcadia Publishing, p. 39. The only paved road that passes through Close City is Farm to Market Road 399. Close City is north of U.S. Highway 380 and west of U.S. Highway 84. The

BNSF Railway BNSF Railway is the largest freight railroad in the United States. One of six North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 36,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and over 8,000 locomotives. It has three Transcontinental railroad, transcontine ...

, which extends from Post to

Lubbock Lubbock ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat of Lubbock County. With a population of 272,086 in 2024, Lubbock is the 10th-most populous city in Texas and the 84th-most populous in the United States. The city is in the ...

, passes to the east.

References

External links

* * * {{authority control Unincorporated communities in Garza County, Texas Unincorporated communities in Texas

See also

References

External links