DOOLE, TEXAS. Doole is on Farm Road 503 a half mile east of the Concho county line and twenty-four miles northwest of Brady in northwestern McCulloch County. A ranching community called Gansel developed around Crossroads School, which had moved to the area from Fort Concho in 1908. Five stores and a cotton gin had been built there by 1910. Around 1911 residents decided to establish a post office and went to David Doole, Jr., the postmaster at Brady, for advice. The name Gansel was unacceptable to the postal service, so in appreciation for Doole's assistance the townspeople named their post office after him. The school was the dominant feature of the Doole community. In 1914 Doole reported a population of twenty-five. By the 1940s it had a population of 250, a school, a church, and ten businesses. After World War II^qv the settlement declined, mainly because of the consolidation of small family farms. The population declined to forty in the mid-1960s but was reported as seventy-four from 1970 to 1990.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: T. Lindsay Baker, Ghost Towns of Texas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986). Jessie Laurie Barfoot, History of McCulloch County, Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1937).

Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl