PALM, TEXAS. Palm, originally known as Beachy, was a small farming town six miles northwest of Brundage on the old San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf line in north central Dimmit County. The community, first named for local farmer Jonas S. Beachy, was probably originally established in 1910, when the railroad began to run through the area. In 1912 its name was changed to Palm by Joseph Green, the first postmaster. The new name reflected the palm trees that were being planted around the town, but it was quite possibly also an attempt to advertise the town's salubrious climate to prospective investors. Palm was one of several colonization projects that took place in Dimmit County during a land boom there from 1910 to 1920. In 1911 a group of 160 Mennonites^qv traveled from Ohio to settle at Palm. But like many other settlers who moved to Dimmit County during this period, they rather quickly found that their farms were much less profitable than they had hoped. The Mennonites left Palm in 1914 after suffering losses marketing their crops, and by 1915 the town was left with only twenty-five residents. No population statistics are available for Palm after 1915. That year a new school was built. Renters who had taken up the Mennonites' farms left after the water pumps they needed to irrigate the fields burned out. By 1930 their farms, though in new hands, were vacant. In 1930 Palm lost its post office, and by the mid-1940s the town had two dwellings. A 1972 map showed no buildings at the site, which had become part of the Elaine oilfield.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Carrizo Springs Javelin, October 28, 1980. Paul S. Taylor, "Historical Note on Dimmit County, Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 34 (October 1930). Laura Knowlton Tidwell, Dimmit County Mesquite Roots (Austin: Wind River, 1984).

John Leffler