SLOAN, TEXAS. Sloan, a nineteenth-century center of farming and ranching, was on the south bank of the San Saba River and Ranch Road 2732 twelve miles west of San Saba in western San Saba County. The area was first settled in the mid-1850s by the family of Dr. Thomas Alan Sloan. The community, then known as Rock Shoals, took root before 1860, when Archibald J. Rose organized the original church. Later Rose built a school and a combination sawmill and gristmill. The name was changed to Sloan in 1894, when the post office, under James A. Sloan, opened for business. Local agricultural production supported a population of 131 in the 1890s, but the community went into rapid decline thereafter. The post office closed in 1904. The New Hope Presbyterian Church, constructed in 1951, was all that remained of a community center in the area after the local school was consolidated with that in San Saba in 1955. The Sloan Ditch-an earthen and stone irrigation canal system built around 1880-was still in use in the mid-1980s. In 2000 the population was thirty.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: San Saba County History (San Saba, Texas: San Saba County Historical Commission, 1983).
