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History in a Pecan
Shell
The Oklahoma-based Taylor-Fowler Land Company laid out this
town alongside the rails of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad sometime
around 1907. Brothers Frank and Fred Fowler held title to 12,000 acres here, although
neither claimed naming rights. The name seems to have been a joke of sorts. The
county seat of Bay City
was dry, so it was thought that this town’s saloons would draw people “like a
magnet.” It is also suggested that the quality of the soil would draw farmers
with the same magnetism.
The town was granted a post office in 1911 and
the following year the town had all essential businesses, including a hotel. Rice
was introduced and the town had a canning facility for its truck crops. By 1914
Magnet’s population reached 40 residents. The Magnet oil field, which had been
discovered some fifteen years earlier was developed in the early 1920s. In the
1930s the population declined to 50 where it remained until after WWII.
After 1943 the town was reduced to only one store and the post office.
In 1949 its population had dropped to only twenty. The Magnet school merged with
the Wharton ISD in 1947. The post office
closed its doors in the mid 1950s. |
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Magnet
city limit
Photo courtesy Ken
Rudine, July 2008 | |
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