DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just the voice passin' it along. Now, every good Texas town's got a name with a story behind it, and the community of Lone Star in Cherokee County is no exception. But before it was Lone Star, before it had a post office or a proper reputation, folks around those parts knew the place by a different name altogether — Skin Tight.
That's right. Skin Tight. The marker doesn't say why, and I'm not gonna guess, but I will say this: a place called Skin Tight that later becomes Lone Star has got some range.
When a post office opened in 1883, the name changed to Lone Star, and that's the name that stuck. Now, Lone Star was no mere wide spot in the road. This was a genuine ante bellum community — a center of trade, education, and culture in the 1880s — and it experienced its greatest growth after the Civil War.
We're talkin' several businesses, a public school, four churches, two lodges, and something called the Lone Star Institute. That's a town with ambition. That's a town buildin' something.
And then came 1893. A disastrous fire — that's the marker's own word, disastrous — and the decline began. The kind of blow a community feels in its bones.
But the trouble didn't stop there. The T and N O Railroad came through the region and bypassed Lone Star entirely. You know what a bypassed railroad meant in those days.
It meant the future was heading somewhere else. Still, hope held on. Two oil field discoveries came along, the kind of thing that can resurrect a dying town overnight.
But neither one proved to be profitable. Two swings, two misses. And that was that.
The hope for Lone Star's revival died right there with those dry wells. From Skin Tight to Lone Star, from a bustling center of culture to a quiet corner of Cherokee County — that's a full life for a Texas town, and the marker makes sure nobody forgets it.
What the marker says
The ante bellum community of Lone Star, a center of trade, education and culture in the 1880s, experienced its greatest growth after the Civil War. Known first as "Skin Tight," it was named Lone Star when a post office opened in 1883. The town once had several businesses, a public school, four churches, two lodges and the Lone Star Institute. The town began to decline after a disastrous fire in 1893. Decline continued when the T & N O Railroad bypassed Lone Star. Hope for the community's revival died when two oil field discoveries did not prove to be profitable.