JOINER, TEXAS. Joiner was a rural stop on the Columbus-La Grange Tap Railroad five miles southeast of La Grange in eastern Fayette County. The community was established in 1882 near the confluence of Baylor Creek and Gravelly Branch to provide wood and gravel for fuel and track ballast. In 1899 the line, which originally connected the Taylor, Bastrop and Houston Railway at La Grange with the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway at Glidden, was abandoned when its bridge over the Colorado River was destroyed by flood. The community ceased to exist, and few remains of the old track bed are visible. During the 1980s residents of the area produced pecans and corn and used the improved pasture for dairy cattle. Producing oil wells dotted the river floodplain.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Colorado County Sesquicentennial Commemorative Book (La Grange, Texas: Hengst Printing, 1986).

Jeff Carroll