Moline

Moline is near Bennett Creek on Ranch Road 1047 some two miles northwest of Castle Peak in northern Lampasas County. Around 1884 settlers began to establish homes in the area along Bennett Creek. One of the first houses there was built by Jack Cook. A combination blacksmith shop and corn mill was soon erected, and later a second mill was established by a man named Robinson. A group of early settlers supposedly named the community after their previous home in Moline, Illinois. Other sources claim that the name was chosen at a town meeting at the local blacksmith shop and was acquired from the label on a new plow for sale there. During the early 1900s Jack Bullock, with assistance from the community at large, built a cotton gin. This attracted a number of new settlers and businesses to Moline. In 1910 a post office was established in J. W. Trussell's store, with Trussell as postmaster. Dr. Hicks established a combination drugstore, medical office, and emergency operating room at the community. The first school, a one-room building, was established 2½ miles south of town and was soon replaced by a larger structure. The local Methodist church was built by a man named Patterson. Later, Baptist and Church of Christ congregations were also established. By the early 1920s automobiles had come to Moline, and Jim Tom Brown built a garage on the site of the old blacksmith shop. In 1930 the town had an estimated population of thirty-five, as well as three stores, two churches, and a school, which by 1935 had grown to include a teacherage, a home economics building, and an agricultural shop. Though the town's population rose to an estimated 100 during the early 1940s, attendance at the local school dropped until the school had to be contracted out, first to Lometa in 1943 and then to Star the next year. The school building continued to be used as a community meeting place. The town had two stores and a post office in the early 1970s, but the post office was discontinued by 1976. During the 1980s Moline's main income was derived from farming and stock raising. The Moline population dropped from its peak of 100 during World War II to an estimate of sixty in 1949 and to forty in 1970, where it remained into the early 1990s. In 2000 the population was twelve.