Prairie Center

Prairie Center is on an unnumbered country road two miles east of State Highway 35 and six miles northeast of Palacios in west central Matagorda County. When, in 1914, the Dunbar schoolhouse was moved onto the prairie in the middle of common school district number 12, its new site was named Prairie Center. Prairie Center was in a farming area, and a nearby site was known as Pumpkin Center after its principal crop. In 1917 a new three-room school was completed; by 1937 it had two teachers and seven grades. The Prairie Center school also served as a voting station and, after the school closed in 1945, as a community center. By 1955 the Prairie Center Home Demonstration Club had been deeded the old school, and in the early 1970s the Prairie Center Mission was shown on maps of the site. A Prairie Center 4-H club was one of nineteen in the county still active in 1984. No population figures were available for Prairie Center, which was shown on the 1989 county highway map with a community hall. The population was twenty-five in 2000.