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CHARLIE, TEXAS. Charlie is on Farm Road 810 twenty-one miles northwest of Henrietta in northwestern Clay County. The community was called Big Wichita Valley in 1878, when Henry T. Dunn built a store just south of the Red River. Later Dunn sold the store to Charlie Taylor, and almost immediately the site became known as Charlie. For years the store was a popular trading post for county farmers and ranchers and some Indians from nearby Indian Territory (later Oklahoma). In 1882 a post office opened at the community. By the mid-1920s the population of Charlie surpassed 200. After the Great Depression^qv and World War II,^qv however, the community's population count declined. The Charlie post office closed sometime after 1930. From the early 1970s through 2000 the community's population was estimated at sixty-five.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: William Charles Taylor, A History of Clay County (Austin: Jenkins, 1972).

David Minor

The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.

Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/CC/hnc48.html (accessed January 7, 2009).

(NOTE: "s.v." stands for sub verbo, "under the word.")

The Handbook of Texas Online is a project of the Texas State Historical Association (http://www.tshaonline.org).

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Last Updated: January 17, 2008
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