RUPEE, TEXAS. Rupee, also known as Camden and as Live Oak, was three or four miles southwest of Lott in western Falls County. The Live Oak Baptist Church was established there in the early 1870s and was named for the grove of large live oak trees where the first service was held. By 1880 the new community had a school and a cotton gin, and that year a post office called Camden was established in the local store. The population was estimated at 200 in 1884, when cotton and livestock were the primary shipments made from the area. In 1885 residents decided to change the name of their community because another town in the state was already called Camden, and the name Rupee was suggested in honor of the local doctor's horse. The Rupee post office was discontinued in 1890, and mail for the community was sent to Travis. In 1891 the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway bypassed Rupee by about two miles, prompting its residents to move their homes and businesses to the new railroad town of Lott. The Live Oak school continued to serve as the focus of a common school district even after the Rupee community faded. In 1905 the district had two one-teacher schools for seventy-two students. A school and a few scattered houses marked the community site on county highway maps in the late 1940s, but in 1949 the school was finally divided between the Travis and Lott districts. Only a cemetery was shown on county maps of the area in the 1980s.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Lillian S. St. Romain, Western Falls County, Texas (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1951).

Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl