Mt. Airy

  MOUNT AIRY, TEXAS


   When the Texas Central Railway paused in December 1880 on Mt. Airy Hill just east of present day Comyn, to determine the best route and method of descending the hill, they laid out the town that they planned to grow to become the primary city in the area.  Located just inside Erath County, the community had a depot, three stores and two saloon by February 1881.  A new home was under construction for a Mr. Morrison  opposite the depot on Front Street and R.T. Childs was doing a general receiving and forwarding commission house business.  Two passenger, mail and express trains arrived in the city on a daily basis.  On July 1, 1881, Mt. Airy became the western most city on the railroad to get telegraph service.

      The plat for Mt. Airy called for 64 blocks subdivided into lots and an additional 68 blocks that could be subdivided.  The 132 planned blocks far eclipsed the 33 blocks laid out for De Leon by the same crew four months later.

       The building materials and a construction train arrived on December 11, 1880 probably to construct a depot.  The  plat was recorded in the Erath County records on December 21, and a town lot sale was held on December 31, after 5,000 broadsides were distributed throughout Texas announcing the sale.

     Once De Leon was established, the rail distribution center for Comanche and Brown counties traffic shifted away from Mt. Airy.   Then in 1891 the Railroad Commission forced the Texas Central to stop in Dublin thereby drawing away more business from Mt. Airy.   The Texas Central was still operating a depot in the town as late as 1887.  Wood burning engines coming from De Leon could not generate enough power to make it up the hill if they stopped in Comyn and so the eastbound trains stopped in Mt. Airy.    Once coal replaced wood, there was no reason to maintain the depot in Mt. Airy and the town disappeared.

       Part of the reason for the decline may also have been the lack of water.  The area experienced several droughts in  the 1880s, the first in the summer of 1881 and a severe drought in 1886-87.  It is difficult to find well water in a swarth of land that runs from the eastern edge of De Leon to Mt. Airy Hill and it is probable the town never was able to achieve a steady growth as did De Leon and Dublin.  An attorney for the railroad wrote to his partner in 1881 that he had purchased a well in Comanche County from a Mr. Logsdon but there was a deed problem.  He noted, “The well is of the greatest importance to the Ry Co. & must be secured at any cost.”

        John Gorman who operated a store in Mt. Airy, purchased one of the nine lots sold at the De Leon auction and announced he would soon be moving to De Leon.  He became a partner with W.C. Streety and was one of De Leon’s early leaders.