Alsa

Alsa, a farming community twenty-two miles north of Canton in northwest Van Zandt County, had a post office from 1894 to 1907. According to one source the town was established by Bill Starnes, a Confederate veteran who opened a store shortly after the Civil War and named the settlement for his boyhood sweetheart. The population reached a high of fifty in 1896, when the community had a combined cotton gin and gristmill, Baptist and Methodist churches, and a general store. The school, established sometime after 1890, had an enrollment of seventy-five in 1904 and was consolidated with the Wills Point school by the early 1950s. Two businesses, a church, Center School, and Howell Cemetery were located in or near the town in 1936. By 1964 the businesses were gone, and the population was estimated at fifteen. Diversified farming and stock raising were the principal industries of the community: cotton, fruits, and vegetables were the chief crops; dairy and beef cattle, hogs, and poultry were grown commercially. By 1979 only scattered dwellings marked the site. In 2000 the population was thirty.