Wonders

Wonders, also known as Wander's and Venice, was a rural community sixteen miles northeast of Nacogdoches on Wonders Creek in northeastern Nacogdoches County. The area was first settled around 1858. During the early 1870s a small town grew up around a general store run by a man named Poter. The community was originally known as Venice, but when a post office was established in 1871 the name Wonders was adopted. Both names were evidently used for a time, but eventually Wonders became more common. By 1885 Wonders had four churches, a public school, four general stores, several cotton gins and gristmills, a blacksmith, and an estimated 130 residents. It began to decline during the 1890s; the post office closed in 1893, and many of the businesses closed. By the 1930s only a school, a church, and a few houses remained. After World War II most of the remaining residents moved away, and in the early 1990s Wonders was a ghost town.