PACIO, TEXAS. Pacio, also known as Lone Elm, Cuba, and Mote's Mill, is on Farm Road 198 and a dirt thoroughfare just south of the Old River Channel and north of Lake Creek, about three miles north of Charleston in northwestern Delta County. The area was settled by 1890, when the Lone Elm School opened. In 1892 James Porter Mote established the Pacio post office, misspelling the Spanish word patio. The post office was discontinued in 1905. The name of the community's school changed to Pacio in 1926, and in 1936 the community had the school, a church, two businesses, and a cluster of dwellings. In 1943 the local school system was consolidated into the East Delta district. By 1964 Pacio had the church and a few scattered dwellings, and in 1970 local children attended classes within the Cooper Independent School District. A 1984 county highway map showed Pacio with two businesses. The community had fifteen inhabitants in 1990 and 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: John J. Germann and Myron Janzen, Texas Post Offices by County (1986). Paul Garland Hervey, A History of Education in Delta County, Texas (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, 1951). Wilma Ross and Billie Phillips, Photos and Tales of Delta County (1976).

Vista K. McCroskey