RYE, TEXAS. Rye is at the junction of Farm Road 787 and State Highway 146, sixty miles northwest of Beaumont in northeastern Liberty County. Though a few people had drifted into the vicinity as early as the 1850s, more organized settlement did not begin until the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway was completed through the area. In 1902 a community post office, named for early settler M. C. Rye, was opened, and in 1929 a new voting box was instituted. In 1935 P. A. Racki, a native of Yugoslavia, organized the Racki Lumber Company at Rye, harvesting the local hardwood and pine forests for his sawmill. By the mid-1940s the community had three businesses and a population of sixty. Rye reported seven businesses and seventy-six residents by 1984 and still reported a population of seventy-six through 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Liberty Vindicator, October 7, 1943. Miriam Partlow, Liberty, Liberty County, and the Atascosito District (Austin: Pemberton, 1974).

Robert Wooster