EXRAY, TEXAS. Exray (X-Ray) is off State Highway 108 fourteen miles northwest of Stephenville in northern Erath County. The area was settled before the Civil Warqv and named for its location at a crossroads. A settlement developed there about 1890, when coal mining was active at Thurber. In 1897 a post office was established at the community with George M. Shelby as postmaster. Postal service was discontinued in 1906, and the mail was sent to Stephenville. Exray was established primarily as a ranching community, but a cotton gin was built there and probably operated in the early 1900s. The Exray (or X-Ray) natural gas field was discovered in 1920 and kept the community active for a time. But by 1933 Exray had only a single business and a population of twenty-four. In the late 1980s the community had a church and cemetery and a few widely scattered dwellings.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Ed Ellsworth Bartholomew, 800 Texas Ghost Towns (Fort Davis, Texas: Frontier, 1971). H. Grady Perry, Grand Ol' Erath (Stephenville, Texas, 1974). Homer Stephen, Fragments of History: Erath County (Stephenville, Texas, 1966). Fred Tarpley, 1001 Texas Place Names (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980).
Jeanne F. Lively
