Sanco 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 Coke 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 30 in 2000.

History

Ranchers in what was then Tom Green County settled Sanco in the early 1880s. Sanaco, a

Comanche The Comanche (), or Nʉmʉnʉʉ (, 'the people'), are a Tribe (Native American), Native American tribe from the Great Plains, Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the List of federally recognized tri ...

leader who frequently set up camp there before White colonization, is honored by the name. In 1888, J. L. Durham established the first post office in his rock residence, and a meetinghouse was used as a place of worship. Additionally, a general store was opened. The settlement was relocated to flatter land near water in 1907. At the new location, a Methodist church had already been constructed. Sanco operated a

cotton gin A cotton gin—meaning "cotton engine"—is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation.. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (); ...

from 1905 until the 1920s, when

drought A drought is a period of drier-than-normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, ...

, low prices, and the destruction caused by

boll weevil The boll weevil (''Anthonomus grandis'') is a species of beetle in the family Curculionidae. The boll weevil feeds on cotton buds and flowers. Thought to be native to Central Mexico, it migrated into the United States from Mexico in the late 19 ...

s put an end to

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 ...

farming in the region. In 1920, the post office closed, but it reopened in 1924. The town's economy finally collapsed in the 1940s and 1950s when rural routes were improved. The post office was shut down by 1976, and the last store shuttered in the early 1970s. Thirty was the population in 1970 and 2000.

Geography

Sanco is located east of

Texas State Highway 208 State Highway 208 (SH 208) is a Texas state highway that runs from San Angelo, Texas, San Angelo to southeast of Spur, Texas, Spur. Route description SH 208 begins at an intersection with U.S. Route 87 in Texas, US 87 (North Bryant Avenue) ...

on an unnamed county road, northwest of Robert Lee, southeast of Colorado City, and north of

San Angelo San Angelo ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Tom Green County, Texas, United States. Its location is in the Concho Valley, a region of West Texas between the Permian Basin (North America), Permian Basin to the northwest, Chihuahuan Desert ...

in central Coke County. It is also located on Yellow Wolf Creek.Sanco at TexasEscapes
/ref> Farm to Market Road 18 used to travel through the community in 1942.

Education

A local meetinghouse served as the first school in 1888. Ulmer Bird was given a land grant for another school, and the Horse Mountain and Meadow Mountain schools consolidated with the Sanco school. Today, the community is served by the Robert Lee Independent School District.

References

{{Authority control Unincorporated communities in Texas Unincorporated communities in Coke County, Texas