Buckeye

Buckeye is on Farm Road 1468 and the Missouri Pacific Railroad, nine miles southwest of Bay City and four miles south of Markham in central Matagorda County. It was named by J. W. Stoddard and A. A. Plotner for their native Ohio (the Buckeye State). They purchased the land from Wylie M. Kuykendall in 1902 and established the Plotner-Stoddard Irrigation Canal headquarters there. The head gate and the pumping station for the company were on the Colorado River and served 30,000 acres. Buckeye had a company store and a boardinghouse. In 1905 thirty-five students were taught in a nearby one-room school that had been donated by Plotner and Stoddard. The community secured a post office in 1907 and in 1908 became a stop on the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway spur to Tres Palacios Pumping Plant. In 1914 the community had 100 residents and a canning company, a truck-farming association, a general store, a lumberyard, a hotel, a telegraph agent, and a telephone connection. In 1936 a church, several dwellings, and three businesses were there. In 1940, however, only one business was reported for the community, and its population had dwindled to twenty-five. By 1949 the Buckeye school had been consolidated with the Tidehaven Independent School District. In 1952 Buckeye had about twenty-one dwellings. Its post office closed in 1971. In 1990 and 2000 its population was reported as twenty-five.