Close City is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

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, Texas Post is a city in and the county seat of Garza County, Texas, United States. Its population was 5,376 at the 2010 census. History Post is located on the edge of the caprock escarpment of the Llano Estacado, the southeastern edge of the Great Pla ...

. The small rural community lies on the High Plains of the Llano Estacado in

West Texas West Texas is a loosely defined region in the U.S. state of Texas, generally encompassing the arid and semiarid lands west of a line drawn between the cities of Wichita Falls, Abilene, and Del Rio. No consensus exists on the boundary betwee ...

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

social experiment A social experiment is a type of psychological or sociological research for testing people's reactions to certain situations or events. The experiment depends on a particular social approach where the main source of information is the point of v ...

conceived by C. W. Post, 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 Cereal Company founder C. W. Post in 1895 and marketed as a healthier alternative to coffee. Post was a student of Jo ...

, and later made a fortune on breakfast cereals such as

Grape Nuts Grape-Nuts is a brand of breakfast cereal made from flour, salt and dried yeast, developed in 1897 by C. W. Post, a former patient and later competitor of the 19th-century breakfast food innovator Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. Post's original product ...

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 Elijah ( ; he, אֵלִ� ...

.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 more resistant rock type overlying a less resistant rock type,Kearey, Philip (2001). ''Dictionary of Geology'', 2nd ed., Penguin Reference, London, New York, etc., p. 41.. . analogous to an upper crust on a cake that is ha ...

, 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 also the owner of General Foods Corporation. Post used much of her fortune to collect art, particularly I ...

, 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 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 cellulose, and can contain minor pe ...

, but lesser amounts of grain sorghum and

winter wheat Winter wheat (usually '' 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. Classificatio ...

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. One of the world's largest aquifers, it underlies an area of approximately in porti ...

, and is usually applied using center-pivot irrigation systems. The Ogallala Aquifer is quickly becoming depleted, so sometime in the future, all farms may have to revert to dryland agriculture. 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, which extends from Post to

Lubbock Lubbock ( ) is the 10th-most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and the seat of government of Lubbock County. With a population of 260,993 in 2021, the city is also the 85th-most populous in the United States. The city is in the northw ...

, passes to the east.

References

External links

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

See also

References

External links