Town of Knapp

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Town of Knapp, out in Scurry County. Picture 1888. Pioneers are pushing out onto Bull Creek, and what do they find grazing there?

Herds of bull buffalo. So they did what any sensible settler would do. They named the place Bison.

Now Bison was no accident of a settlement. Those early folks got to work. They founded a Baptist Church right there on the creek bank.

The school went up in a nearby pasture. And the community sat right on the fringe of ranching land belonging to two prominent early Texas cattlemen, A. P.

Bush and Benjamin Tillar. Big names, big land. But here is where things get interesting.

When the time came to make things official with a post office, the U.S. Post Office Department had a problem with the name Bison. Duplicate, they said.

Already taken. So just like that, in 1890, the town and its new post office, which at that point was housed in a dugout, got a new name. Knapp.

The post office itself had quite a run. Through the decades, Knapp kept on keepin' on. And when the oil boom came rollin' through, that little post office served those workers for a rousing decade.

Then in 1959, it closed. A dugout post office, a buffalo-grazed creek, a name rejected by Washington. That is Knapp, Texas, and now you know the story behind it.

What the marker says

Pioneers settling Bull Creek, 1888, where herds of bull buffalo grazed, called their community Bison. They founded the Baptist Church on the creek bank, the school in a nearby pasture. Bison was located on fringe of the ranch belonging to A. P. Bush and Benjamin Tillar, both prominent early Texas cattlemen. In 1890, name of town and post office (then housed in a dugout) became "Knapp" after the U.S. Post Office Department refused Bison because it was a duplicate name. In 1959, after a rousing decade of serving the oil boom workers, the post office closed. (1967)