Boonsville

Boonsville is on Farm Road 920 twenty miles southwest of Decatur in southwestern Wise County. By the mid-1870s an estimated thirty farmers were settled near the banks of Boon's Creek, named for Stephen Boon, a pioneer settler of the county. In 1878 a post office was established with Joseph Roth as postmaster. Two years later Charlie Miller built a cotton gin near the banks of South Willow Creek. Three stores were operating by 1881. The following year the town was moved from Boon's Creek to its present site. By 1914 Boonsville had a population of 200, two general stores, a school, a bank, and a steam gristmill. Residents expected to get a railroad connection in the early 1890s but were disappointed. The failure to obtain a railroad and the decline in cotton production in the surrounding area between 1900 and 1910 effectively stalled the town's growth. From 1914 until the mid-1970s the population hovered around 150. It declined sharply in the early 1970s to fifty-two, where it remained in 1990 and again in 2000. The school was consolidated with the Bridgeport district in 1950, and the post office closed in 1965.