Caro

Caro is just off State Highway 204 ten miles north of Nacogdoches in north central Nacogdoches County. It was named for José Antonio Caro, who received title to the surrounding land in 1835. The area was settled before the Civil War, but a community did not grow up until the end of the nineteenth century, when the settlement became the center of intensive logging operations. A post office and a school opened in 1904. Around 1906 the Caro Northern Railway linked the town with Mount Enterprise. Caro flourished in the period just before World War I; in 1914 the town had two drugstores, a general store, a physician, a grocer, a large sawmill, and a reported population of 1,300. After the war, however, the sawmill closed and the town began to decline. By the mid-1930s the population fell to 150. The population remained steady through the 1970s, but in the intervening years the school, the post office, and all of the businesses closed. By the early 1990s Caro was a dispersed community. The reported population in 1990 and again in 2000 was 113.