JOLIET, TEXAS. Joliet is at the intersection of Farm roads 671 and 2984, seven miles northwest of Luling in southwest central Caldwell County. Among the first settlers to arrive in the area was H. A. Loehman, who built a home on Plum Creek in 1846. A post office operated from 1901 until 1903; the community was later served by a rural mail route. Oil was discovered in a nearby field in 1923, and a small boom followed, but the town faded in the 1930s. During the early 1930s its population was reported as ten. In the 1940s the community had separate church and school facilities for African Americans, Mexican Americans, and whites; several businesses and residences were shown at the location on county highway maps at that time. A church and three cemeteries marked the community's location on county maps in the late 1980s.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Lockhart Post-Register, May 6, 1948. Mark Withers Trail Drive Museum, Historical Caldwell County (Dallas: Taylor, 1984).

Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl