A reader from Gladewater called a few weeks back with an interesting question: “How many towns named ‘Lone Star’ are located in Texas?”

At my last count, 10 existed, and six of them are in East Texas.

The best known Lone Star stood in Morris County and was the home of Lone Star Steel on U.S. 269 north of Daingerfield. The town had a population of 2,006 and 86 businesses in 1980, but it had fallen to 1,615 in 1990.

Another Lone Star stood in Cherokee County. It was founded in the early 1880s by storekeeper Henry L. Reeves, who established a store 13 miles east of Rusk.

Reeves became known for his hard deals and local farmers dubbed the community “Skin Tight.” The town had a population of 300 at one time, but today it has only 10 residents.

Delta County’s Lone Star also was known as Barton and Volney. It was on the old Bonham and Jefferson road a mile west of Jot ‘Em Down.

When a railroad bypassed Lone Star, the town declined and its school was merged with Pecan Gap.

Lamar County’s Lone Star stood on Farm-to- Market Road 906, 12 miles north of Blossom. It also had a school, but it was merged with Powderly.

At its peak, the town had the school, one business and a cluster of homes. By 1983, the settlement had been dropped from a county map.

Another Lone Star, a mile south of Corrigan in Polk County, was the site of Tom Hackney’s sawmill on the Houston, East and West Texas Railroad. Hackney later moved his mill to Valva, and Lone Star declined.

A sixth Lone Star in East Texas was a rural community four miles east of Quitman in Wood County. While the town never had a post office, it did have a school in the 1800s.

By the 1940s, the school had disappeared and only four homes remained.

The other Lone Stars in Texas were near Bastrop in central Bastrop County; two miles south of New Braunfels in Comal County, on Farm-to-Market Road 378, 11 miles north of Lockney in Floyd County, and between Chico and Decatur in Wise County.

Most of the Lone Star names likely came from the Texas slogan, “The Lone Star State.”

Bowman is the author of more than 40 books about East Texas. He can be reached at bob-bowman. com.