THALIA, TEXAS. Thalia, at the junction of U.S. Highway 70 and Farm Road 262, eleven miles east of Crowell in east central Foard County, was granted a post office in 1890, the same year a school was founded at the community. Thalia was in Hardeman County until the establishment of Foard County in 1891. The town was first called Paradise, but when postal authorities rejected the name, it was renamed Thalia, meaning "blooming" or "luxuriant." The townsite, donated by William W. Pigg, was platted in 1910. Growth was stimulated by the oil boom of the 1920s that gave Thalia twenty-two businesses. The town was incorporated in 1926, when the population was fifty. The reduced oil production and droughts of the Great Depression^qv years set the town back. The high school, added to the school system in 1930, closed in 1943. The population was 180 in 1950. The post office was closed by 1960, and by 1980 Thalia had a population of 104. The town was the setting of Larry McMurtry's novel The Last Picture Show (1966). Through 2000 the population was still recorded as 104.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Fred I. Massengill, Texas Towns: Origin of Name and Location of Each of the 2,148 Post Offices in Texas (Terrell, Texas, 1936). Bailey Phelps, They Loved the Land: Foard County History (Quanah, Texas: Quanah Tribune-Chief, 1969).

William R. Hunt