BUCKHOLTS, TEXAS. Buckholts is at the intersection of Farm Road 1915, State Highway 36, and U.S. Highway 190, by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway nine miles northwest of Cameron in northwestern Milam County. The community, established in 1881 when the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway built through the area, was named for John A. Buckholts, who donated land for the site. A post office opened there in 1882, and by 1884 Buckholts comprised sixty-one residents, two general stores, two hotels, a dry-goods store, and a lumber dealer. Farmers, including a number of immigrants from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, were attracted to the blackland soils of the area; cotton became the community's principal shipment in the 1880s and 1890s. The Hope Lutheran Church was organized at Buckholts in 1890, and the congregation erected a building in 1899. Methodist and Baptist churches were also built in the community during the 1890s. A school was built by 1896. In 1900 Buckholts reported a population of 182. In 1903 the Buckholts school had two teachers and eighty-five pupils. By 1914 the community had a bank, telephone service, and a newspaper, the weekly Bulletin. The population of Buckholts was estimated at 800 from the 1920s through the 1940s. In 1948 the community had a school, three churches, three factories, and some thirty other businesses. Though exact estimates vary, the population of the town has slowly declined after the 1960s, reaching 362 in 1980 and 335 in the early 1990s. In 2000, however, the population rose to 387.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Milam County Heritage Preservation Society, Matchless Milam: History of Milam County (Dallas: Taylor, 1984).

Mark Odintz