Point Blank Started as Blanc Point

Point Blank has one of those names that sounds like a joke until the old story makes it human. Florence Dissiway, a Frenchwoman who moved into the area in the 1850s as a governess for the Robinson families, called the spot Blanc Point. Local use eventually turned that into Point Blank.

The town sits at U.S. 190 and SH 156 in northern San Jacinto County. Future Texas governor George T. Wood had a plantation nearby as early as 1839, and he was later buried in the Robinson cemetery, where the state put up a monument in 1911. A post office opened in 1884.

For decades Point Blank stayed small and agricultural. TSHA gives it an estimated population of seventy-five in 1925, and the number stayed steady until Lake Livingston changed the pace in the late 1960s. More residents and visitors followed the water, and the community voted to incorporate in 1975. By the mid-1980s, Point Blank had twelve businesses and 325 residents. The name may be what people remember, but the lake explains the modern town almost as much as the old French phrase does.