View, TX (Taylor County)

View is at the intersection of U.S. Highway 277 and Farm Road 1235, thirteen miles southwest of Abilene in Taylor County. Although a Baptist church was organized at the site earlier, the town was not established until the Coleman Cutoff of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway system came through Taylor County, bypassing Abilene. View, originally called Caps Sides, came into existence through the speculating activities of the Sweetwater-based Western Development Company, led by attorney Royston Campbell Crane. This firm had been incorporated in 1909 to deal in townsites along the Santa Fe line. Frustrated in attempts to purchase land at more lucrative sites, Crane settled for the Taylor County location in the belief that "it would at least make a good little railroad town." View became a registered townsite on August 2, 1910; it took its name from its location on a hill overlooking attractive farmland below. The founding company hired a townsite manager and cleared land for construction. The railroad depot became the first official building in the town, which acquired a post office in 1910. Soon a lumber company, a general store, and other businesses were laid out in a town square surrounded by houses. In 1914 View had an estimated population of forty. School was held in the church, with one teacher in charge of five grades, until the 1911 bond election funded construction of a two-room schoolhouse on land donated by the founding company. In 1935 a joint school called Butterfield was built with the neighboring town of Caps. Elementary classes were still conducted there in 1988, although the district was consolidated with Wylie Independent School District in 1978. View did not grow even to the modest expectations of its founders, a failure which Crane attributed to the bitterness of Abilenians and others in the county toward the Santa Fe company. Ironically, the additional railroad station in View may have contributed to Abilene's success in attracting Camp Barkeley in 1940, situated between View and Abilene. In 1988 View had a store, a church, and a few houses and reported a population of seventy-one. In 1990 the population was seventy-five. The population remained the same in 2000.