Fletcher

Fletcher is between U.S. highways 69/287 and 96, fifteen miles north of the center of Beaumont in southeastern Hardin County. Its site is that of a nineteenth-century ferry across Village Creek. The community was founded when the Gulf, Beaumont and Kansas City Railway was built through the area in 1894 and was probably named for the Fletcher family of Beaumont, which operated a sand pit north of Village Creek as well as several sawmills in northern Hardin County. The post office at Lumberton, a railroad stop in the early 1900s, was transferred to Fletcher in 1914. In the mid-1920s the sawmill at Fletcher was dismantled, and its post office was discontinued in 1926. Although the site of Fletcher, on a sandy bluff overlooking Village Creek, remained a popular recreation area, the community's population declined from an estimated 450 before the mill closed to about fifty by 1945. No population figures have been reported for Fletcher since 1947, although the area remains populated as Beaumont and Lumberton expand to the north.