Fetzer

Fetzer (Fetzer Switch), in far northeast Waller County near the Montgomery and Grimes county lines, developed as a switching yard on the International-Great Northern Railroad (later the Missouri Pacific, which in the 1980s paralleled Farm Road 1774). Sometime before 1913 Laura Fetzer gave a one-mile stretch of land for the railroad switch and later mysteriously departed from the community that bears her name. Farmers, stock raisers, and sawmill workers made up the early population. A post office located on land provided by J. M. Allan operated there from 1913 until 1940. By 1914 an estimated 150 persons lived at Fetzer; perhaps as many as twelve sawmills operated within a twenty-mile radius of the community. When the timber in the area was depleted the sawmills closed and Fetzer declined. During the 1920s the population dropped to seventy-five; in the 1930s it was only about twenty-five. The railroad switch ceased operations, but a few homes still existed in the area in the late 1970s. Fetzer was listed as a community in 1990, but without census figures.