AIKEN, TEXAS (Bell County). Aiken was a mill and farming community on the Leon River twelve miles northeast of Belton in northwest Bell County. A steam saw and flour mill was constructed on the site by Abner Kuykendall in 1857, and a settlement grew up around it, on land owned by Herman Aiken.^qv By 1860 Aiken was a thriving community with an estimated 200 inhabitants. During the Civil War^qv the population of 600 produced a number of goods formerly imported; the town supported a cabinet shop, a tanyard, a shoe and saddle shop, a hat factory, a Confederate distillery, and wood and blacksmith shops for the manufacture and repair of wagons. Aiken had a post office from 1868 to 1872. The town seems to have declined in the later nineteenth century; it was not shown on the state highway map of 1948. The townsite was inundated by Belton Lake in the 1950s.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Bell County Historical Commission, Story of Bell County, Texas (2 vols., Austin: Eakin Press, 1988). Temple Junior Chamber of Commerce, Bell County History (Fort Worth, 1958). George Tyler, History of Bell County (San Antonio: Naylor, 1936).

Mark Odintz