Mankins 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 ...

located in Archer County,

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

, United States. According to the

Handbook of Texas The Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) is an American nonprofit educational and research organization dedicated to documenting the history of Texas. It was founded in Austin, Texas, United States, on March 2, 1897. In November 2008, the ...

, the community had a population of 10 in 2000. Mankins is located within the Wichita Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area.

History

The area was settled around 1889. In 1890, the Wichita Valley Railway came through. It built a station to load

grain A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached husk, 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 ...

and a church was built. It was originally named Lazarus Switch. The ranch was bought by Charles Mangold in 1908, who then built a store and hotel by the railroad. It was built a mile south of the ranch headquarters. The town was named after Tom Mankins, who was the foreman for the nearby Lazarus Ranch, which is north of the community. Mankins operated a general store in the area. In 1909, a post office opened. By 1914, there was a cattle breeder, three cattle feeding companies, and two cotton buyers, and around 55 people resided in the area. Oil was discovered in the 1920s. Three oilfields were operating 42 wells between 1923 and 1926 in Mankins. Its population rose to 85 by the late 1920s and stayed there for a decade. A brick building was built and was used as a community center and church during that same period. Methodists were the only religious denomination in the area until

Baptists Baptists are a Christian denomination, denomination within Protestant Christianity distinguished by baptizing only professing Christian believers (believer's baptism) and doing so by complete Immersion baptism, immersion. Baptist churches ge ...

came in 1936. It then had 6 businesses in operation. Methodists moved to Holliday when a tornado struck the town in 1938. An abandoned church from Bowman was moved to the community in 1941. By 1950, the population rose to 120 and had four businesses operating. The post office closed in 1963. The next year, there were no businesses and its population dropped to 50 by the end of that decade. Water access improved in the 1970s, but town lots that were still owned by Mangold's estate were not for sale, so it was unable to continue growing. Its population was 45 in 1990 then plunged to 10 in 2000. Mankins also served as the hosting facility for the D.S. Dudley Circus and carnival in the 1970s. The

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

Eothyris ''Eothyris'' is a genus of extinct synapsid in the family Eothyrididae from the early Permian. It was a carnivorous insectivorous animal, closely related to '' Oedaleops''. Only the skull of ''Eothyris'', first described in 1937, is known. I ...

refers to J.R. Parkey, a local landowner from Mankins who assisted the

Museum of Comparative Zoology The Museum of Comparative Zoology (formally the Agassiz Museum of Comparative Zoology and often abbreviated to MCZ) is a zoology museum located on the grounds of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is one of three natural-history r ...

field crew in collecting fossils on his property.

Geography

Mankins is located at the intersection of

U.S. Highway 82 U.S. Route 82 (US 82) is an east–west United States highway in the Southern United States. Created on July 1, 1931 across central Mississippi and southern Arkansas, US 82 eventually became a route extending from the White Sands of New ...

U.S. Highway 277 U.S. Route 277 (US 277, US-277) is a north–south United States Highway that is a spur route of U.S. Route 77. It no longer connects to its parent route, US 77, although it does intersect another one of its spurs ( U.S. Route 377). It runs ...

, and

Texas State Highway 25 State Highway 25 (SH 25) is a state highway in north Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arka ...

, 18 miles northwest of Archer City and southwest of

Wichita Falls Wichita Falls ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Wichita County, Texas, United States. It is the principal city of the Wichita Falls metropolitan statistical area, which encompasses all of Archer, Clay, and Wichita Counties. According to ...

in northwestern Archer County.

Education

The community's first school was Lone Star School, which opened in 1889. It continued to have a school in 1914. In the 1930s, there was a brick building that was used as a high school, which was destroyed by a tornado in 1938. The school was rebuilt and used until 1941. It joined the Holliday Independent School District soon after. The community continues to be served by Holliday ISD today.

References

{{authority control Archer County, Texas Unincorporated communities in Texas