Linn Flat

Linn Flat, a rural community off State Highway 204 some fourteen miles northwest of Nacogdoches in northern Nacogdoches County, was first settled in the late 1840s. The town is said to have been named for its location on a small level prairie, surrounded by several creeks, where a grove of linden trees was growing. A post office was opened in 1850, and a school and a cemetery were established around the same time. During Reconstruction Linn Flat was the site of political fighting between local conservatives and agents of Governor Edmund J. Davis's State Police. In December 1871, in what is known as the Linn Flat Raid, one local man was killed by Texas State militiamen, prompting a well-publicized trial.

Linn Flat prospered in the era after the Civil War. By the mid-1890s the community had a Baptist church, a school, a doctor, two general stores, a large tannery, and several gristmills, sawmills, and cotton gins; the reported population in 1896 was 100. The town began to decline just after 1900, when it was bypassed by the Texas and New Orleans Railroad. Half of the population moved to the new town of Trawick, two miles to the west. The Linn Flat post office was closed in 1918. During the 1920s, however, the population began to grow again, and in 1930 Linn Flat had a reported 100 residents and two businesses. The two schools at Linn Flat closed around the time of World War II. In the early 1990s Linn Flat was a dispersed rural community with a church, two cemeteries, and a few houses.