LOCKER, TEXAS. Locker is on Ranch Road 500 seventeen miles northwest of San Saba in northwestern San Saba County. Settlement began in the vicinity in the 1870s. The rural school community was known first as Knob and sometime later as Mount Pleasant. In the 1890s James Monroe Locker and his family arrived in the area from Bosque County and built the first store and cotton gin. The town developed rapidly in subsequent years; by 1900 it had numerous stores and craft shops, Mason and the Woodmen of the World societies, several churches, and an ice cream parlor. When a post office opened in 1899 the town took the name of its late business leader, James Locker. Thomas H. Locker was the first postmaster. The community continued to prosper during the early years of the twentieth century, and its population approached 200 in 1915. In 1911 two nearby schools, Mesquite and Competition, were consolidated with the school in Locker. Shortly after World War I, the town went into decline. In the mid-1920s it reported approximately half the residential and business population of the previous decade. By the 1950s Locker had lost its school and post office to Richland Springs. From 1967 to 2000 Locker's population was estimated at sixteen. A store and a cemetery marked the community in the mid-1980s.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Alma Ward Hamrick, The Call of the San Saba: A History of San Saba County (San Antonio: Naylor, 1941; 2d ed., Austin: Jenkins, 1969). San Saba County History (San Saba, Texas: San Saba County Historical Commission, 1983).
