GAINESMORE, TEXAS. Gainesmore, also known as At Last, was on Farm Road 457 seventeen miles south of Bay City in eastern Matagorda County. The community was founded on the banks of Caney Creek sometime between June 1901 and February 1, 1903, when the Hawkinsville branch of the New York, Texas and Mexican Railway was completed to the area. Reportedly, travel over the Hawkinsville Tap, as it was known, was so difficult that grateful passengers dubbed the end of the line "At Last." The Caney Valley Development Company held a contest to come up with a more appropriate name, and E. E. Fry's winning entry combined the surnames of J. W. Gaines and Colonel Moore, two officers of the development company. A post office operated at the community from 1912 to 1918 and from 1920 to 1938. The February 12, 1913, edition of the Bay City Daily Tribune listed the population of Gainesmore as 150, and in 1915 the town had a lumber company, a general store, and a blacksmith. In 1927 the highway from Bay City to Sargent was completed, which probably contributed to Gainesmore's decline. Its population was reported as twenty-five from 1925 to 1948, after which no number was reported. The Hawkinsville Tap line was abandoned in December 1931, and by 1936 Gainesmore reported only one business. In 1938 the community had a one-teacher school for black students. Gainesmore was probably abandoned by around 1950. In 1990 the coastal prairie had reclaimed the land where it once stood.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Matagorda County Historical Commission, Historic Matagorda County (3 vols., Houston: Armstrong, 1986).

Will Branch