GOFORTH, TEXAS. Goforth, twelve miles northeast of San Marcos, was once the center of cotton production in eastern Hays County. It was named for landowner and merchant J. T. Goforth. In 1881 the community built its first school, called Prairie Hill. A post office operated at Goforth from 1890 to 1902. Although population estimates for the community fell from 100 in 1892 to twenty in 1896, by 1900 Goforth's ginning company had established itself as one of the busiest in Central Texas. In the early 1900s the prosperous farms and ranches of eastern Hays County supported a variety of businesses and services at Goforth, but soil exhaustion and erosion began reducing local agricultural yields, and a flood in 1913 accelerated the decline. Area farms and businesses failed, and Goforth lost population. The community persisted as the site of a school for local Mexican Americans until 1948, when the school closed. The 1981 county highway map showed only a cemetery at the townsite.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mary Starr Barkley, A History of Central Texas (Austin: Austin Printing, 1970). Dudley Richard Dobie, A Brief History of Hays County and San Marcos, Texas (San Marcos, 1948).
