Simmons

Simmons, originally named Simmons City, was on the Nueces River five miles west of the San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf line and ten miles from Oakville in central Live Oak County. It was named for Dr. Charles F. Simmons, the owner of the local Simmons Ranch, which had originally encompassed some 60,000 acres, including the land on which the town was built. Around February 1906 he divided his ranch into tracts for sale, including tracts for the establishment of a town; by October of that year all the land had been sold to buyers from Texas, Oklahoma, and twenty-nine other states. A post office opened in 1907, when the town had a population of seventy-five. A church and a school were built in 1908. In 1927 Simmons included a hotel, a grocery, and a drugstore, and in 1935 its school had 148 White students. A two-story brick schoolhouse was built in 1938, and that year the school had five teachers and 119 students. In 1941 the school closed, and students attended classes at Three Rivers. The population of Simmons had dropped to thirty-five by 1940, and by the end of the 1940s the town no longer reported any businesses. Its post office closed in 1945, and the mail was delivered through Three Rivers. In 1990 the church, which had a historical marker, still stood, and the Simmons cemetery was still in use. The population was sixty-five in 2000.