Buckholts Grew from Blackland Soil and a Donated Townsite

Buckholts sits where Farm Road 1915, State Highway 36, and U.S. Highway 190 meet northwest of Cameron. Its origin story is compact: the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway built through the area in 1881, and John A. Buckholts donated land for the community that took his name.

The soil did the rest. German, Austrian, and Czech immigrant families were among the farmers drawn to the blackland ground, and cotton became the main shipment in the 1880s and 1890s. Early Buckholts had the working pieces of a farm-service town: general stores, hotels, dry goods, lumber, churches, and later a bank, telephone service, and a weekly newspaper.

That gives Buckholts a clear place in Milam County's farm history. The town grew where a railroad crossed blackland country that drew immigrant farmers, and cotton became its main shipment in the 1880s and 1890s. Hope Lutheran Church was organized in 1890. By 1914, the community also had a bank, telephone service, and a weekly newspaper. Its early story is a compact one: blackland farms, immigrant families, cotton shipments, churches, and a railroad town that grew around them.