TURNERVILLE, TX

TURNERVILLE, TEXAS. Turnerville was a company rice-growing town on a road later locally known as the Oyster Lake Road, south of Collegeport in southwestern Matagorda County. It was founded in 1922 by the Turner Rice and Irrigation Company (also called the E. W. Turner Irrigation Company), and its residents consisted largely of rice farmers brought in by the company to work the land near DeMoss. Turnerville included a number of houses built for black workmen; it also had at least six businesses, including a blacksmith shop, a bakery, a general store, and a rice warehouse. The settlement apparently did not last long, though the 1936 county highway map shows a number of dwellings and four businesses about a mile southeast of Collegeport. After Turnerville was abandoned, a lunch stand, a drugstore, and a home for senior citizens stood at the site until Hurricane Carla destroyed them in 1961.