Smithwick

Smithwick is on Farm Road 1431 eight miles east of Marble Falls in southeastern Burnet County. It was formed by the merging of three smaller communities-Hickory Creek, Elm Grove, and Smithwick Mills. The Hickory Creek community, which had a church and a school, was established in the early 1850s. Elm Grove was a school community near Post Oak Creek, just west of Hickory Creek. Smithwick Mills, so named for the mill built by Noah Smithwick in the 1850s, was two miles west of Hickory Creek. A post office was established at Smithwick Mills in 1871 with Thomas A. Stinnett as postmaster. The name was changed to Smithwick in 1882, although the school district was known as Hickory Creek until at least the mid-1920s. Smithwick reached its peak in the mid-1880s, when it had a water-powered gristmill, a church, a school, and 150 residents; cotton was the principal shipment made by area farmers. The number of residents declined rapidly after the completion in 1889 of the Marble Falls extension of the Austin and Northwestern Railroad a few miles to the west. The population fell to fifty by 1890 and to twenty-five by 1892. The post office was discontinued in 1926, and mail for the community was sent to Marble Falls. The number of residents remained at thirty through the 1930s and 1940s. A school, a church, and several scattered houses marked the community's location on county highway maps. The Smithwick school was consolidated with the Marble Falls Independent School District in 1951. In the 1980s Smithwick had a church, a community center, and a cemetery. In 2000 the population was fifty-two.