DUGOUT, TEXAS. Dugout, often called "The Dugout," was on the west side of Deep Creek just east of the site of what is now Milburn in northeastern McCulloch County. Settlers came to the Deep Creek area in the late 1860s, and the community that grew up along the creek supposedly took its name from the first store, a dugout in the side of a hill. The Dugout community had a saloon, a doctor, a blacksmith, and possibly a post office; it was said to have good schools and churches in 1877. The community declined in the early 1880s, and its remaining residents probably moved to nearby Milburn. The site in the late 1980s was overgrown with mesquite and prickly pear, and no evidence of Dugout was shown on county highway maps.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Wayne Spiller, comp., Handbook of McCulloch County History (Vol. 1, Seagraves, Texas: Pioneer, 1976; vol. 2, Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains Press, 1986).
