Erath

Erath was on Farm Road 1637 six miles northwest of downtown Waco in north central McLennan County. It was founded before 1860 and named for George Bernard Erath. By 1880 the settlement had a gristmill and a general store. At its peak, it also had two churches, a school, two cotton gins, and a blacksmith's shop. Erath had a post office from 1896 to 1907, when mail for the community was rerouted through Waco. The Erath school was consolidated with several others in 1917 to form the China Spring district. A few scattered houses marked the community's location on county highway maps in the 1940s. The population of Erath was reported at fifteen in 1900, forty-seven in 1911, twenty-four in 1931, and fifty in 1949 and from the 1960s through the mid-1980s. By the end of the 1980s, much of the area had been annexed by the city of Waco.