Nix

Nix is on Ranch Road 580, 11½ miles west of Lampasas in southwestern Lampasas County. In the 1850s an early military trail, the Fort Phantom Hill Road, ran through the site of the present town. The community was settled in the early 1880s on the stagecoach and mail route from Lampasas. David Coterell started a blacksmith shop there in 1883, and Elizabeth Wallace opened a general store around the same time. When a post office was established in her store later that year, she became the first postmistress. By 1892 the town had two mills and gins, and by 1896 Baptist and Christian churches had been established. The post office was discontinued in 1906. During the 1920s and 1930s, when there was considerable interest in drilling for oil and gas in the area, Nix was the site of the only dry test well in the county. The population of Nix was estimated at eight until 1896, when it rose to twenty-seven. It remained around twenty-five through the 1940s. By 1947 the town had a store and a combination school and church, half a mile west of town. Nix was still shown on county maps in the mid-1980s and was still listed as a community in 1990. In 2000 the population was six.