VALDASTA, TEXAS. Valdasta is on Farm Road 545 ten miles northeast of McKinney in northeast Collin County. Tandy W. Smith, who settled in the area in 1882, originally called the community Vandersville; when postal authorities rejected this name, Smith renamed the town. A post office was established in 1886. In 1896 four churches, two stores, a flour mill, a sawmill, and a gin served an estimated 100 residents. Mail to the community was discontinued in 1910 and routed through nearby Blue Ridge. The population increased, however, and mail service was reestablished in March 1914. Valdasta served as a school and church community for area farmers. In 1925 its population was estimated at 160 and in 1939 at fifty. From 1940 through 1990 the estimate has remained at forty. In 1954 mail service was discontinued, and mail was once again routed through Blue Ridge.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Roy Franklin Hall and Helen Gibbard Hall, Collin County: Pioneering in North Texas (Quanah, Texas: Nortex, 1975). J. Lee and Lillian J. Stambaugh, A History of Collin County (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1958).

David Minor