Cheetham

Cheetham was on U.S. Highway 90A and the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway a mile east of Sheridan and twenty miles southwest of Columbus in west central Colorado County. The community was founded during the late 1880s as a station on the San Antonio and Aransas Pass line. In 1888 a post office, named Cheetham for the first postmaster, John A. Cheetham, was opened there. By 1890 the community comprised an estimated 150 inhabitants, and cordwood was the main product shipped from its railroad station. The next year a school was operating at Cheetham, and in 1896 the town was platted and recorded. The one-teacher Cheetham school served forty-seven pupils in 1904. Around 1906 speculators promoted the town to midwestern farmers, but Cheetham did not grow. In 1908 its post office was transferred to nearby Sheridan; it remained there until 1912, when the Cheetham office was reopened. Cheetham in 1914 had seventy-five inhabitants as well as a general store and Baptist and Methodist Episcopal churches. In 1920 the community once more lost its post office, and it appears to have gradually declined thereafter. It was no longer named on the county highway map by 1940. In 1981 all that remained of the community was a cemetery; the railroad line had long been abandoned.