Tell 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 southwestern Childress 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 15 in 2000.

History

1887 saw the founding of Tell. Tell-Tale Flat was the subsequent name after Lee. Belle Garrison, the postmistress, opened the first post office in her dugout home in 1888. Federal postal officials abbreviated the name to Tell in 1905. The following year, Jim Fox had a grocery and drugstore, R. A. Hawkins constructed the first

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 (); ...

, and Richard A. Sandifer operated a general store. Four churches and numerous other businesses had been founded by 1916. The Tell State Bank was in operation from 1916 to 1934, when it amalgamated with the Childress State Bank. Tell gradually lost most of its enterprises to other factors and improved transportation facilities. Tell operated two churches, a store, and a cotton gin by 1984. The population declined throughout the rest of the 20th century and ended at 15 in 2000. Its population in 1984 was 59, which went up to 63 in 1990. The population was reported as 32 in 2010, then 20 in 2019. Although it is unincorporated, Tell has a

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

with the ZIP code 79259.

Geography

Tell is located at the intersection of Farm to Market Roads 2042 and 94, southwest of Childress and south of Estelline in southwestern Childress County.

Education

Janie Roberts taught at the first school in Tell that was located south of where the community currently stands. It moved here in 1912 and was notable for its

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch ...

team, which would win a lot of championships. After it joined the Childress Independent School District in 1963, the original school building became a community center.

Notable person

Walt Faulkner, who in 1950 became the first rookie to win the

pole position In a motorsports race, the pole position is usually the best and "statistically the most advantageous" starting position on the track. The pole position is usually earned by the driver with the best qualifying times in the trials before the ra ...

for the

Indianapolis 500 The Indianapolis 500, formally known as the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, and commonly shortened to Indy 500, is an annual automobile race held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana, United States, an enclave suburb of Indian ...

, was born in Tell and lived there for the first two-and-one-half years of his life.

References

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