ROOSEVELT, TEXAS. Roosevelt is on Ranch Road 291 sixteen miles west of Junction in western Kimble County. It was established with a post office in 1898 and was named by its founder, W. B. Wagoner, for Theodore Roosevelt, who reportedly visited the area with the First United States Volunteer Cavalry (the Rough Riders). It served as a shipping point for feed and supplies for local sheep and goat ranchers. The Patterson and Riek Ranch, established in 1897, imported Angora goats from South Africa in 1925. In the 1920s the community hosted polo matches, as local ranchers bred polo ponies for national markets as well as horses for the United States Cavalry. Hill Country tourism also added to the local economy in that decade with the establishment of several businesses, including the Luthringer Hotel. The population of Roosevelt, estimated at twenty-five in 1925, averaged 100 from 1941 through the middle 1980s. In 1990 it was ninety-eight. By then the community was known for Marc-Key Company nursery, its poinsettia business, which shipped 35,000 plants that year. The population dropped to fourteen in 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Austin American-Statesman, November 26, 1990. Frederica Burt Wyatt, "Kimble County," Stalkin Kin, May 1976.
