SANCO, TEXAS. Sanco, on Yellow Wolf Creek and a county road east of State Highway 208 in central Coke County, was settled by ranchers in the early 1880s in what was then Tom Green County. It was named for the Comanche chief Sanaco, who regularly camped there before white settlement. J. L. Durham opened the first post office in his rock home in 1888, and a meetinghouse served as both school and church. A general store was also established. In 1907 the town was moved to flatter ground and closer to water. A Methodist church had already been built at the new site. A school was erected on land donated by Ulmer Bird, and the neighboring Horse Mountain and Meadow Mountain schools were merged with the Sanco school. Sanco had a cotton gin from 1905 until boll weevil devastation, drought, and low prices ended cotton farming in the area in the 1920s. The post office was closed in 1920 but reopened in 1924. The improvement of rural roads in the 1940s and 1950s dealt the final blow to the town's economy. The last store closed in the early 1970s, and the post office was discontinued by 1976. The population was thirty from 1970 through 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: T. Lindsay Baker, Ghost Towns of Texas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986 Jewell G. Pritchett, From the Top of Old Hayrick: A Narrative History of Coke County (Abilene, Texas: Pritchett, 1980).
