NARUNA, TEXAS. Naruna is on Farm Road 1478 eighteen miles northwest of Burnet and three miles south of the Lampasas county line in northwestern Burnet County. A post office was established there in 1878 with William M. Spitler as postmaster. The name Naruna was suggested by Spitler in honor of the ship that had brought him to Texas. In 1884 Naruna had three churches, a school, and 150 residents; cotton and livestock were the principal products shipped by area farmers. The initial growth of the community was stunted in the later 1880s, however; population estimates fell to twenty-five by 1890. It is possible that the completion in 1885 of the Lampasas-Brownwood section of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway, which bypassed Naruna to the north, prompted residents to move to towns on the railroad. The population in Naruna rose to seventy-five by 1892, but the community did not recover its earlier prosperity. The post office was discontinued in 1906, and mail for Naruna was sent to Lampasas. The population was ten in 1933, forty-five in the mid-1940s, and seventy-five in the mid-1960s; it was reported at forty-five from the 1970s to 2000. The Naruna school was consolidated with the Lampasas schools in 1944.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Darrell Debo, Burnet County History (2 vols., Burnet, Texas: Eakin, 1979).

Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl