BRUNDAGE, TEXAS. Brundage is on State Highway 85 six miles west of Big Wells in northeastern Dimmit County. S. P. Brundage platted the town in 1909, and the community grew quickly after it became a stop on the San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf Railroad around 1910, the year it was granted a post office. The settlement shipped onions, strawberries, and other crops. By 1915 Brundage had over 100 residents, two general stores, and a telephone connection. The town also had a school at least as early as 1918.

Extended drought and low crop prices, however, drove many Dimmit County farmers off their land by that year. By 1925 the population of Brundage had dropped to fifty. In 1936 the community was still a railroad depot and had a post office, one business, and seven houses. In 1944 the post office closed, and by 1953 the school had been consolidated with the Big Wells district. By the mid-1980s the old school building had been converted to Coomb's Country Steakhouse, but nothing else remained of the town except a cemetery and a few dwellings. In 2000 the population was thirty-one.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Paul S. Taylor, "Historical Note on Dimmit County, Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 34 (October 1930). Laura Knowlton Tidwell, Dimmit County Mesquite Roots (Austin: Wind River, 1984).

John Leffler