CHALK MOUNTAIN, TEXAS. Chalk Mountain, on U.S. Highway 67 near the Somervell county line in southeastern Erath County, was named for a nearby elevation of white rock. Although the J. H. F. Skipper ranch, founded in the area in 1860, may have served as a prewar trading center, the community of Chalk Mountain was not itself established until later. The Chalk Mountain post office, established in 1876 with Elisha D. McCoy as postmaster, was originally in Somervell County. It was moved to Erath County by 1892. By 1890 Chalk Mountain had a gin, a school, and two churches, and by 1900 its population was eighty-one. A Masonic lodge was chartered there in 1904 and occupied the upper floor of a frame commercial building. Chalk Mountain did not prosper because local residents had good road access to Stephenville, and by 1910 its population had fallen to fifty. Its post office closed in 1927. In 1940 the population of Chalk Mountain was sixty-nine, and the town reported two businesses. Its population in 1980 was twenty-five, and meetings were still being held at the Masonic lodge. In 1990 and again in 2000 Chalk Mountain's population was still listed as twenty-five.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: T. Lindsay Baker, Ghost Towns of Texas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986). Vallie Eoff, A History of Erath County, Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1937).

William R. Hunt