Frio

Frio is a small farm community just east of Frio Draw (from which it probably took its name) on Farm Road 1055 about twelve miles northwest of Dimmitt in northwestern Castro County. The community was originally centered around the Frio school, first established in 1899 in a dugout on the northwest bank of Frio Draw. A new schoolhouse was built by public subscription in 1903, and a Baptist congregation was organized in the area during the early 1900s. Though no population figures exist for the community until the 1970s, local sources indicate that the population of the surrounding area continued to grow until the 1920s. In 1929, the community built a new four-room brick schoolhouse, and in 1930 the Frio Baptist Church was formally organized after a religious revival conducted by Herman Coe and L. T. Field from Wayland College. A 1936 map showed a school and scattered buildings at the site. When the Frio school closed in 1948, Frio Baptist Church began to use the old schoolhouse and helped to keep the community together; in 1957, the church moved into a new building about a half mile north of the old school. By 1971 Frio had an estimated population of sixty-five. The church continued to be the focus of the community into the 1980s; in 1990 about sixty people lived at Frio. By 2000 the population had dropped to fifteen.