VOCA, TEXAS. Voca is on State Highway 71 and Farm Road 1851, twelve miles southeast of Brady in southeastern McCulloch County. The first settlers, who arrived in the area during the late 1850s and early 1860s, experienced occasional attacks by Indians. A post office was established in 1878; John and W. C. Deans named it Voca, for Avoca, Arkansas. By the mid-1880s Voca reported 120 residents, served by a school, a Methodist church, a gristmill, a cotton gin, and two general stores. A bridge was built across the San Saba River near Voca in 1910. Its population was reported as 100 from the mid-1890s until the mid-1960s, when it fell to fifty. Voca reported fifty-six residents in 1990. The population remained unchanged in 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Jessie Laurie Barfoot, History of McCulloch County, Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1937). Wayne Spiller, comp., Handbook of McCulloch County History (Vol. 1, Seagraves, Texas: Pioneer, 1976; vol. 2, Canyon, Texas: Staked Plains Press, 1986).

Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl