Fairdale

Fairdale was a lumbering and farming community fourteen miles southeast of Hemphill in southeastern Sabine County. Although the area was settled as early as the 1830s, little is known about Fairdale before it received a post office in 1902. A post office that operated under the name Oakdale from 1897 until 1899 may have been located in the same community. Fairdale had three stores and seventy-five residents in 1914. Its population had fallen to fifty by the 1920s and was reported at that level until the mid-1960s, after which no estimates are available. The Fairdale post office was closed in the early 1950s, and the last store in the community closed in 1959. By 1968 most of the area had been inundated by the waters of Toledo Bend Reservoir.