Knickerbocker is an
unincorporated community
An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...
in southwestern
Tom Green County, Texas
Tom Green County is a county located on the Edwards Plateau in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 120,003. Its county seat is San Angelo. The county was created in 1874 and organized the following year. It is ...
, United States. It lies along
Farm to Market Road 2335, southwest of the city of
San Angelo
San Angelo ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Tom Green County, Texas, United States. Its location is in the Concho Valley, a region of West Texas between the Permian Basin (North America), Permian Basin to the northwest, Chihuahuan Desert ...
, the
county seat
A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or parish (administrative division), civil parish. The term is in use in five countries: Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, and the United States. An equiva ...
of Tom Green County. Its elevation is 2,051 feet (625 m). Although Knickerbocker is unincorporated, it has a
post office
A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...
, with the
ZIP code of 76939.
History
Named for
Washington Irving's character Diedrich Knickerbocker by early settlers related to Irving, the community quickly became significant, being the most important community in the county aside from San Angelo. Agriculture was long the community's mainstay, between grain farming and sheep ranching.
Knickerbocker Ranch was established in 1877 when Joseph Tweedy, E. Morgan Grinnell, Lawrence Leslie Grinnell, and Joel Barlow Reynolds drove Mexican sheep into the valley from their camp near
Fort Clark. The first townsite was established along Dove Creek, about one kilometer east of the
Dove Creek Battlefield. In 1882, at the invitation of
George Ward Holdrege, Joel Barlow Reynolds (father of
Samuel W Reynolds) moved to Nebraska to help expand the
Burlington and Missouri River Railroad Company throughout the northern
Great Plains
The Great Plains is a broad expanse of plain, flatland in North America. The region stretches east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland. They are the western part of the Interior Plains, which include th ...
states.
Knickerbocker's post office was established in 1881 and rebuilt in 1896 and 1936. The community was moved in 1889 around a nearby hill to have better access to water. Local children were able to attend school in Knickerbocker starting in 1889, but the school was closed and merged into
Christoval's system in 1956.
Knickerbocker, Texas
Handbook of Texas Online
The Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) is an American nonprofit educational and research organization dedicated to documenting the history of Texas. It was founded in Austin, Texas, United States, on March 2, 1897. In November 2008, the ...
, 2008-01-17. Accessed 2008-08-11.
Notable person
* Laura Bullion
Laura Bullion (October 1876 – December 2, 1961) was an outlaw of the Old West. Most sources indicate Bullion was born in Knickerbocker, near Mertzon, Texas, Mertzon, in Irion County, Texas; the exact day of her birth is unclear. Data in the 1880 ...
(1876 – 1961) was an outlaw of the Old West and a member of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch
Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch was one of the loosely organized outlaw gangs operating out of the Hole-in-the-Wall, near Kaycee in Wyoming, a natural fortress of caves, with a narrow entrance that was constantly guarded. In the beginning, the gang w ...
See also
References
External links
*
Unincorporated communities in Tom Green County, Texas
Unincorporated communities in Texas
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