KELTON, TEXAS. Kelton is at the junction of Farm roads 592 and 2697, in east central Wheeler County. It is named for the old Kell Ranch, on which it was founded. Between 1907 and 1912 the ranch had its own post office. As early as 1907 the community had a school, which was replaced in 1935 by a consolidated school near the ranch headquarters. By the following year the population of the town was listed at ten, and the post office had been reestablished. In the 1940s the community had a church, a general store, a cotton gin, and a filling station to accommodate area ranchers and farmers. Kelton reported forty residents by 1949 and sixty-one in 1967. By 1970 the post office had been discontinued, and the number of businesses had decreased to two. From 1973 to 1990 the population was listed as seventy-five, but had dropped to twenty by 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Arthur Hecht, comp., Postal History in the Texas Panhandle (Canyon, Texas: Panhandle-Plains Historical Society, 1960). William Coy Perkins, A History of Wheeler County (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1938). Millie Jones Porter, Memory Cups of Panhandle Pioneers (Clarendon, Texas: Clarendon Press, 1945).

H. Allen Anderson