Jellico
Southlake, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Robert Emmett Wilson came with his family to this area during the 1880s and built a general store near this site. The name Jellico was chosen for the community when a post office was established in 1898. The town was named after a town in Tennessee from which some of the settlers had immigrated. By 1895, Jellico had a cotton gin, blacksmith shop, grist mil, syrup press, and school. The town began to decline when cotton prices fell in 1907. Wilson's General Store closed in 1912, and the school was consolidated into another district. (1985)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Jellico grew up around Robert Emmett Wilson's general store in the 1880s and took its name, and a post office, in 1898—borrowed from a Tennessee town the settlers had left behind. For a moment it had the full kit of a Texas farming village: cotton gin, blacksmith, grist mill, syrup press, and school. Falling cotton prices after 1907 hollowed it out, and by 1912 the store had closed and the school had merged away.
Why it matters
Jellico is a classic Texas ghost town whose brief rise and quiet vanishing traced the boom-and-bust rhythm of the cotton economy.
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Related people
- · Robert Emmett Wilson
Themes & tags
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