Travis

Travis, on U.S. Highway 77 five miles southeast of Lott in southwestern Falls County, was named for Travis Fleming Jones, who surveyed the site for the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway in the 1880s. When the railroad was built through the area in 1891, a post office was established at Travis. The next year the community had a general store and a population of seventy-five; stock raising was the primary occupation of many area residents. By 1900 the population of Travis had increased to 148, and in 1905 the Travis district included one school and three teachers for 131 White students, and one school and one teacher for twenty Black students. The community had serious fires in 1914 and 1925, both of which nearly destroyed the business district. Travis had a population of 300 in the 1920s and 1930s but declined steadily thereafter. Three churches and several businesses and residences were shown on maps of the area in the late 1940s, when the population was estimated at 100. The railroad stopped providing local passenger service in 1949, but Travis continued to be the focus of a common school district until 1961, when its school was consolidated with the Rosebud Independent School District. The Southern Pacific abandoned the section of track between Waco and Rosebud in 1967, thereby depriving Travis of commercial rail service as well. Its post office was discontinued in the mid-1970s. By the 1980s two churches and a few businesses marked the community on county highway maps, and the population was reported as sixty. In 1989 Rosebud and Lott shared a high school located at Travis. Its population was still sixty in 1990.