Impact

Impact, north of Abilene, voted incorporation in 1960 as the only wet town in dry Taylor County. When two liquor stores opened in Impact, Abilene lawyers went to court to oppose the incorporation of the town. In 1963 the Texas Supreme Court upheld the incorporation and also the selling of liquor in Impact. The town, covering forty-seven acres, was named for Impact, Incorporated, the advertising business of its mayor, Dallas Perkins. The population of Impact in 1970 was sixty-one. In the late 1970s the city of Abilene voted to legalize the sale of alcohol in a local-option election, and Impact lost its reason for being. Most of the liquor businesses in Impact soon closed, and the community became just another suburb of Abilene. By 1992 Impact reported a population of twenty-five. The population grew to thirty-nine in 2000.