BANKERSMITH, TEXAS. Bankersmith, thirteen miles north northeast of Comfort in northwestern Kendall County, was established in 1913, when the San Antonio, Fredericksburg and Northern Railroad laid its track between Fredericksburg and Comfort. The community was named for Temple Doswell Smith, president of the first bank to be established in Fredericksburg and one of the primary donors for the railroad construction. Just south of the community was the only railroad tunnel in the state. A local post office was established in September 1914 with Rudolph Habenicht as postmaster. The office was sometimes listed as being in Gillespie County, depending on where the postmaster lived. At its peak in the 1920s Bankersmith had a store, a dance hall, a lumberyard, and about fifty residents. The population fell to ten by 1930, and the railroad abandoned its track in 1935. A business and a few scattered houses marked the community on county highway maps in the 1940s, but the post office had already been discontinued. A population of twenty was reported from 1949 through 1961. The ruins of the old railroad tunnel were still visible in the 1980s.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Kendall County Historical Commission, A History of Kendall County, Texas (Dallas: Taylor, 1984).
