South Riverside

Hamon is east of U.S. Highway 183 twelve miles southeast of Gonzales in Gonzales County. It was known as South Riverside until A. O. Hamon opened a general store there; subsequently the post office and the town carried his name. Hamon had a post office by 1884. That year the community had two steam gristmills, two cotton gins, a general store, a grocer, and a population of forty-five. In 1890 the population had dropped to twenty-five, but the town had added a blacksmith and a justice of the peace. By 1900 a school and a church had been erected. The introduction of good county roads, however, made it possible for local farmers and ranchers to purchase their supplies in nearby, and now accessible, Gonzales. The general store in Hamon closed, and rural delivery replaced the post office in 1924. In 1936 Hamon had three businesses, a school, a church, and seventy-five inhabitants. For the next two decades the population figures remained constant, but by 1967 the population had dwindled to fifteen. In 1990 no businesses were registered, and the number of inhabitants was still fifteen. The population remained unchanged in 2000 and increased slightly to twenty by 2009.