Youngsport

Youngsport is on the Lampasas River and Farm Road 2484, nine miles south of Killeen in southwestern Bell County. Michael Young brought his family to the area before 1850. A wagontrain led by Joel Cosper came with 106 people in 1870. A post office was opened in the community in 1871 and probably named either for P. G. Young, the proprietor of the town's hotel in 1884, or for Michael Young; the latter, reputedly a former ship's captain, is said to have named the site "Young's port" when he arrived as the earliest settler. In 1875 a local church, the Live Oak Baptist Church, was organized. A Church of Christ congregation, predecessor of the current congregation, was meeting in a brush arbor by 1882; the church met in the school for many years, evidently built a building in 1925 or 1926, and completed a new building in 1988. By 1884 Youngsport had become a cotton-shipping town with as many as 200 inhabitants, three churches, two cotton gins, a hotel, and flour and corn mills. The first local school of record began operation around 1886. The school, one of the larger rural schools in the county in the early twentieth century, had seventy-seven pupils and two teachers in 1905. The community supported a Grange chapter and a Woodmen's lodge in the early 1900s. The population had dropped to 100 by 1890 and declined slowly to some seventy people by 1914. The post office was closed in 1930, and by 1948 Youngsport had a population of fifty, two churches, and two businesses. Local students were transferred to the Killeen Independent School District in 1938. In 1988 the population stood at forty inhabitants, and there were no business establishments in the community. The population remained at forty through 2000.